


Running In The Shadows

by creamcoffeelou



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Bank Robbery, Crime Scenes, Hate to Love, M/M, References to Illness, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 16:31:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 43,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18664138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creamcoffeelou/pseuds/creamcoffeelou
Summary: Harry had a plan for his life. Work his dream job, raise his family, and settle down one day. He thrived in the ordinary. But when tragedy strikes, he has to see exactly how far hes willing to go to help the person he cares for most.Louis was never a part of that plan.





	1. One.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey it's been a while since I've posted anything! I hope you all enjoy this one, it's a little different! Thanks to the brilliant martsart for the art for this fic. Say hey on my [tumblr](https://2ofusmp4.tumblr.com/) if you want.

**HARRY: May, 1958 -** **_Arizona_ **

The road is empty as Harry speeds down the endless black of the pavement.

Hot, summer sun beats down against the road, sending waves of the unbearable heat all around him. Not a single cloud sits in the sky, but rather an expanse of light blue fills the entire world above him, never ending. Beside him on both sides miles and miles of desert run on, a seemingly never ending expanse of nothingness, mirroring the sky. All of it is a little overwhelming - the pure nothingness. The way that there’s so much of absolutely nothing on every side of him, that seems to stretch on for longer than he can handle. 

A speed limit sign on the side of the road reminds him to drive safe, tells him that tired driving kills and to drive fifty-five miles per hour, but he doesn't listen. It’s yet another sign that he doesn’t want to listen to, but at least it’s  _ something.  _ The last sign he’d seen had been nearly twenty miles back, something about that gas station being the last one for for a long stretch. 

The top is down in his car, letting the sun shine down in warm waves against his skin. Air whips around him through the open windows, sending his hair into a frenzy, but the  _ whoosh _ ing sound calms his racing heart. 

He feels small in this moment, surrounded only by the world and his own mind to keep himself company. His problems almost seem insignificant in the grandness of it all, yet he can’t help but think about them, can’t help but feel that with each passing moment the last thing on this earth that he loves is slipping away from him. 

A sign says the nearest town - Glenwood Falls - is only twenty miles up. Yet another sign warns that there’s only one more gas station before the town, written in massive red letters on an otherwise all white billboard. It’s the only sign he’s seen for the last hundred miles, over and over, various warnings that if he were to run out of gas up here, it would just be him and the creatures that dwell in the desert to figure it out. 

He presses his foot against the gas a little harder and watches as the speedometer needle flickers up to sixty, seventy, eighty. There’s something similar to the feeling of freedom in the feeling of going to fast. It doesn’t last long before he finds that the discomfort of the wind whipping his face going that fast isn’t pleasant, but he loves it. 

He slows again as he gets closer to town, the  _ welcome  _ sign shining bright in the mid morning sun. 

 

_ Welcome to Glenwood Falls _

_ Population: 2,349 _

_ Please Drive Carefully _

 

The roadsides are bare through the desert. 

People don’t need reminders that there’s food awaiting them in fifty miles when they already know there’s nothing they want more than to get out of the unrelenting heat and emptiness of sand around them. Every moment he spends in the desert just reminds him of how small he is in a world that doesn’t care about him. About how he could drive thirty miles into the sand and never be found. 

Surprisingly, the thought is calming. 

A song he’s never heard before comes into tune as he drives into the town, the static getting less and less as he comes closer. The station number is familiar at home, but his own familiarities are replaced with others the farther the gets from home. He presses a Bobby Day cassette into the player, smiling just a bit as the familiar sound fills the car as he continues to drive. 

He’s slow as he goes through town, only stopping when a bright pink, neon sign promises a cheap and quick breakfast. His stomach moans when he reads the sign, suddenly remembering that he hasn’t eaten in nearly two days, and that watching out for his own health is something he needs to do, at least every once in a while. 

He comes to a stop at a four way stop and hesitates slightly as another driver goes before him even if he’d gotten there first. The roads in the town aren’t well maintained, and the car jostles as he drives down the small stretch of road to the first diner he lays his eyes on. It’s small, with windows that cover the entire front face of the building and signs that boast a big, cheap breakfast. That’s all he really cares about. 

He parks the car behind the building before walking around to the front. A bell chimes above the door when he walks in, and a little sign with small black lettering in the walkway says he can seat himself. “Welcome to Toody’s!” A cheerful, female voice calls from somewhere that Harry can’t see, so he doesn’t pay it much attention. The floors are made up of loud, checker patterned white and black tiles, only made more vibrant with the contrast against the bold read of the chairs at each table. A penny-per-play jukebox rests in the corner, another song Harry doesn’t know playing from it. 

He goes over to a small, two person table, and finds a menu tucked against the edge of the table and the wall beside it. Wasting no time, he picks it up and flips through the pages, trying to figure out what he wants. It’s eleven in the morning, just early enough that he could get breakfast or lunch if he wanted, but nothing particularly sticks out to him. The photos don’t make him feel any more hungry than he had when he walked in, and nothing particularly looks great to him. His mind wanders more to other things than it stays present in the moment, and that makes it even more difficult than it needs to be. It all blends in enough that he doesn’t have much trouble deciding on getting what he always gets at little places like this back home. 

Maybe that’s not the wisest decision, getting something that he’s always gotten elsewhere, but he doesn’t want to think about the tiny details like that. It’s too much to hold inside of his mind all at once. He folds the menu back together and places it where he found it. Folding his hands together on top of the table, he looks around.  

There are four others inside of the diner. 

A young couple, probably in their early twenties, sit at the far end, chatting easily between each other as they share a milkshake. A teenage girl with large, round, thick rimmed glasses sits at the counter, reading through a textbook as she takes notes on something. She’s got a bright yellow button up top on and her pants flare wide at the ankles. There’s one elderly man three boths over, smoking a cigarette, dressed to the nines like he’s just come from church. He coughs between drags, sips his coffee, and lights up a second cigarette when the first reaches its end. 

He waits for a waitress to come over without worry. A part of him isn’t sure why he isn’t worried, why he isn’t feeling  _ anything -  _ but he can’t bring himself to focus on his own thoughts, let alone any of the circumstances around him. 

He’d imagined he would be in a rush - imagined he’d want to do everything quickly, bite the bullet, and end it all as fast as possible. But sitting on the hard chair of a diner in a town he’s never heard of, he almost doesn’t want to go on. He almost wants to disappear, to pretend everything is alright and that life doesn’t hurt. He thinks back to the desert, and the endless expanse of sand. Driving hundreds of miles, he’d come across some of the tall cacti with the arms that he can’t remember the name of. He’d drawn those when he was a child for fun, never thinking he would have seen one in person. He thinks of driving far away from everything and parking himself right next to one and fading away. 

It’s something he would never do - never  _ could  _ do - but he’s always thought that fleeing was a thought everyone has when things get hard. It’s only the decision to stay that proves one selfless, or the decision to leave that makes a coward. 

The man nearest him takes another drag of his cigarette and blows the large cloud of smoke out right in front of him as he turns the page of his paper. The smell travels across the room and over to Harry, to the point where he can nearly feel the cloud of smoke wrapping around him. 

“What can I get you, sweetie?” An older woman with a hot pink apron wrapped around her asks, breaking him out of his trance. She has a pen and a pad of paper in her hand, with a hip cocked to the side. Her name tag says Janice in hand drawn letters, all leaning just so slightly to the right. 

“Coffee, please. And two scrambled eggs on white toast.” She writes the order down, then smiles and tucks the pad and pen into the front pocket of her apron. 

“I love a man who knows what he wants!” She says with a laugh in her voice before she’s sauntering back off to the kitchen, “Len, order!” Her voice travels loud throughout the small diner, bouncing off of the walls and echoing through the kitchen. 

He pulls his wallet out and looks at the worn picture of the young girl, tucked firm into the slot meant for his photos. He runs his thumb over the bright, wide smile on her face, and forces himself to take a deep breath. 

If nothing else is certain, he knows one thing: it’ll all work out somehow. 

 

Leaving the diner after breakfast finds him checking into a small motel a few blocks down. The front of the building is old, chipping away from the weather. But on the outside, it’s clear that an overzealous gardener had been given a big budget, with the dozens cheerful hydrangea bushes that rest along the outside. There’s a lime bush snuggled beneath a bustle of palm trees, a bench tucked somewhere between it all. It doesn’t look very well thought out, but he can’t help but appreciate the sentiment. 

With the small size of the town, there’s so little to look at that it didn’t give him any time to worry about much of anything, so now, he almost feels confronted with the colors in front of the building. The town being small and quiet is good, lets him rest, lets him sit and think. Thinking rarely does him much good, but he knows it’s important. Especially given all of this, given everything that’s happening around him. If he lets it all brush by, he’ll never think about any of it. And even he knows that letting himself go without thinking will only lead to getting caught. 

He doesn’t want to be here any longer than he absolutely needs to be, and with each second that ticks on, he’s only left feeling more trapped than he’d felt with the previous one. The longer he lets himself sit on the bed and try to think about other things, the more his mind refused to move on.

The worst of it all is that his mind has a tendency to linger, to dwell on the things he least wants to think about, until it’s circling around in his mind without a relief. 

It’s partly motivating. 

But more so, it’s terrifying. 

  
  


It’s evening when he gets up again and walks next door. The bold, red lettering on the alarm clock beside his bed reads 6:57 as he makes his way out. Wrapping his coat around himself and sticking his hands in his pockets, he walks down the stairs. 

The sky is still blue. Fading as the hour goes on, but the last crescent of the sun still sits above the horizon, leaving everything bathed in a tinge of orange as the pastels bleed into the blueness of the sky above. 

A different diner sits right next door to the small motel Harry had checked into. It looks even smaller than the one he’d sat in for breakfast, with what he assumes is a family name as the name of the place. 

Two blocks down and diagonally across the street sits Glenwood family bank, short and unimposing. He sits in a booth nearest the window and orders himself dinner, and forces himself to eat slowly as he watches.  It isn’t until that moment that a plan slowly starts to formulate in his head, cogs slowly shifting as he manifests something that had been a plan - an intention - into something he knows he will actually be doing. 

He watches as people walk along the sidewalks, watches as people walk in and out of the small stores that line the street. Sometimes they have bags on their arms, sometimes they leave empty handed. As sunset comes, the thickness of the crowd settles down. People return home to their families, return home after work, settle in for the night with those that they care for the most. 

The entire town seems normal, just like something he would see at home. He knows that each and every one of these people who live here have lives of their own, families of their own, and yet he doesn’t feel anything about taking advantage of them for the benefit of his own family. 

His sandwich sits half eaten on his plate for fifteen minutes before the waitress comes over, snapping him out of his daze of watching.  Waiting for something he hasn’t entirely figured out just yet. “More coffee?” He shouldn’t be having coffee this late at night, but he’s long since foregone healthy sleeping. 

“Yeah, please. Thank you.” He pushes his cup closer to her, letting her fill the cup back up with the dark liquid. His full attention is brought to the woman, who’s just wearing dark blue jeans and a white polo shirt. She doesn’t have a name tag, but Harry’s never seen much use for them anyway. He’d always thought it was almost weird to refer to someone as their name when they hadn’t properly introduced themselves.  

“So, what brings you to town?”

“Just passin’ through. Headed to Seattle.” He says, the same script he’d been regurgitating since he left. 

“Seattle, huh? Where are you from? Can’t exactly hide a southern accent like that from us around here.” Harry’s accent is fake. He knows it’s fake, but it’s all adding up to be exactly what he needs. 

She’s smiling,  more of a smirk really, and Harry would normally be more than happy to make small talk with any waitress, but today he feels dejected, angry, and like he wants nothing more than to move on already. He can tell she’s flirting, too, and it isn’t helping him with wanting to keep up the small talk. But he knows he has to make face. If Harry wasn’t personable, if he wasn’t friendly, he would be the first person the blame would get put on. 

“Got myself a job up in those parts. Moving up there ahead of my family.” 

“Oh, that’s nice! Moving up there to get everything set up for your missus, I suppose?.” 

“Got two missus in my life. My wife and our daughter.” Even though it’s a partial lie on his lips with no wife in the picture, Harry can’t help but smile at the mention of his daughter. Just thinking about her brings an overwhelming amount of happiness to him, and she’s a reminder of why he’s here. A reminder of what he’s got to do. 

“Well, that sounds lovely. You enjoy your coffee Mr…”

“Collins. James Collins.” 

“Mr. Collins.” She finishes before she’s walking off, filling up the cup of coffee for the next person at the table nearest his. 

Harry keeps watching out the window for a while longer, going through almost three more cups of coffee before he decides he’s been here more than long enough. 

Eleven in the morning rolls around before long, and the streets are almost deserted. The sunday crowds have gone to church and long since left the thought of him behind. There are only two people standing on the street, and no one else is in the diner with him. He stands. Harry places a dollar down on the table for his forty cent breakfast and puts his jacket on. 

“You have a good day, sir,” The waitress says, catching him on his way out as he tried to sneak away.

“Thank you,” He says in response on his way out the door, the breeze hitting against his skin again.

“No problem, Mr. Collins. Feel free to stop by the next time you’re in town!” He walks out with that and with a final glance towards the bank across the street, he quickly goes to his motel room.

 

It’s ten fifty two in the morning the following day as Harry sits in his car, hidden behind the motel, and takes as many deep breaths as his lungs allow. His chest expands with each breath, but the relief from the anxiety sitting in his chest never comes. His nerves feel like live wires and the feeling doesn’t make any of this any easier. The tingling feeling settles deep into his fingertips, little needle-like pin pricks jabbing against his skin. 

It’s harder to breathe here, he notices, with the altitude so much higher than he’s used to, but it only forces him to focus on it even more. Each breath he takes he counts, in for four seconds, out for ten. It forces him to consider the feeling of the air entering and leaving his lungs with a bit more strain than he’s used to. 

It’s only a few minutes before Harry is pulling out of his spot and driving down the street to the same bank he’d been watching so closely the day before. The spot he gets is two away from the door, and the front plate is taken off of the car and placed beneath the passenger seat beside him. The streets now are empty, just as deserted as he’d hoped they would be. Midweek church sessions are what small towns like this are famous for, he’d learned, and a part of that has made what his plan work so well. 

He takes a final look around and doesn’t see any cops, doesn’t so much as see another person walking on the street, so he sets his plan into motion. 

Out of the glovebox comes his pistol, a white mask, and a brand new pair of blue sunglasses he’d picked up at a gas station several states back. On his hands, he slips gloves on. He pulls the mask over his face, then adds the blue tinted sunglasses over the holes in the cloth over his eyes. The material of the mask feels odd against his skin, but he forces himself to ignore the feeling as he takes a few more deep breaths. 

In for four, out for ten. 

He feels slightly lightheaded as the rush of anxiety and adrenaline courses through him, and it only adds to the sting in his lungs. The tint of his windows hides him, for now, but he forces his thoughts back to the present moment, to what he’s doing, and why he’s doing it. His heart pounds as he cocks the gun and steps out of the car, taking the five stairs up in stride before walking into the building. 

It’s almost anticlimactic the way no one notices at first - for nearly ten entire seconds there is no commotion, no worried looks, nothing. Not so much as a glance in his direction. 

“Everyone get your hands in the air!” He says, just loud enough to catch the attention of everyone in the building. His voice is back to his native accent, the same way the rest of the people around him speak. No clear accent, no specific dialect, nothing that could easily identify him. 

There’s only one family in the bank and a guard, along with a single teller behind the counter. “I’m gonna need the three of you to stand up against that wall there,” He says first, pointing to a wall across from him with a tilt of his head, holding the gun up towards the guard. His own hands are shaking, but he tenses every muscle he can to keep from showing it. Keeping himself composed is all a part of the act, the dance of getting others to do what he needs them to do. It’s all a game, and every move is made with strategic thought. 

As the three of them make their way to a wall where he can see them and the teller, he makes his way forward. The family is a father with a young son, and he doesn’t so much as make eye contact with them. He doesn’t need to think about them when he has his own family to worry about. 

“ _ Daddy, what’s going on?”  _ The boy’s question rings in Harry’s ears before he makes his way to the counter, keeping the corner of his eye on all of them. 

“Give me everything you have in your drawer.” He says to the teller, an older man with thinning grey hair. “Real slow, with only one hand.” With a gun in his face, the man doesn’t hesitate. Quickly, small stacks of hundred, fifty, and twenty dollar bills are being placed set on top of the counter between them. 

“There’s - there’s more in the safe.” The man says, voice shaky. 

“That’s not what I said I wanted. Put those in a paper bag.” As soon as the teller does what Harry says, he takes the bag and slowly backs away from the counter. He only tucks the gun back in his pants as soon as he’s out of the building, before he’s running down the stairs. 

He’d left his car door unlocked with the key in the ignition, so he slips inside without a hitch and turns the key. It rumbles to life, and he speeds off without looking back. 

 

Two and a half hours down the road, he pulls into a small rest area and grabs the paper bag from the glove box. He rolls up his windows as he dumps the bills on the passenger seat before he slowly starts counting, his heart thumping in his chest. It nearly feels like he’s going to vomit, but he keeps counting instead. 

All in hand, it comes out to eight hundred and sixteen dollars. 

He leans his head against the steering wheel and sighs softly, tears welling up in his eyes. The mid afternoon sun is bright and warm against his skin, and he focuses on it, trying his best to keep himself grounded. He breathes in again, counts the time of it, tries to focus on the sting in his lungs. But nothing works. 

The options only look bleak from there on out, but he knows he has to do what he has to do. It’s not enough. It’s not as much as he’d wanted to get, and he knows it’s not nearly enough to hold him over. A part of him doesn’t think he could stoop lower than this, than already traumatizing a family and an innocent employee, but now, knowing he has to do it all over again, nothing feels right. His chest aches.

Rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands, he takes a final deep breath. The idea that there’s nothing else he can do settles him, just enough to ebb the overwhelming guilt. He puts the money back into the bag, then shoves it under the front of his seat, puts his car into gear, and drives away all over again. 

 

It’s four in the afternoon when Harry finds himself laying in bed, right on top of the motel blanket that smells strongly of dust. The room was cheap, only six dollars, but a part of him can’t help the guilt that gnaws at his stomach with every penny he spends on himself. A part of needing money so desperately that he’d do anything for it makes him ache when he spends it anywhere else. But the more rational part of his mind knows that he wouldn’t be able to be here if he wasn’t at least slightly rested. 

He’d taken right back to the interstate as soon as he counted the money, before driving and driving until he reached the bigger town he’s in now. Palm Springs had always been one of the places he’d wanted to visit, yet he can’t find himself enjoying it. Staring at the empty cream white of the ceiling above him, he wants nothing more than to be back home. Back to his familiar life with the familiar routine that at one point he’d found himself calling boring. 

As he lays in bed, he doesn’t think about anything other than his girl, doesn’t think about anything other than the life he created and is so easily tearing apart. 

It’s six at home - just before supper time - so he picks up the phone receiver from the table beside him and dials a number he’s long since known by heart. His fingers seem to move faster than his thoughts do, and before long, the line is ringing. 

The sound is harsh, loud and high pitched against his ear, but it’s calming all the same. It rings three times before his mother’s voice comes through the other end. 

“Hello?” She asks, a little hum in her voice like she’s always done as she makes dinner. He can hear a record playing in the background, just a muffle of melody that he can’t quite make out. 

“Hi, mom,” He says, voice just above a whisper. His own room is silent, and the words hang in the air until they turn stale. It’s been over a week since he’s called and he’d promised he would call at least once a week when he left. 

“Oh, Harry! Hello dear, how are you? How is everything with work?” She doesn’t sound upset that he hasn’t called. Doesn’t even sound very curious about his reasoning, and that lifts a weight from his chest he hadn’t realized was there before that moment. 

“It’s going well. It’s - I just miss Bella, that’s all. It’s so difficult being away from her.” 

“Oh, love. Do you want to speak to her? I know you like her in bed shortly after supper, so I suppose I shouldn’t keep you from her when this is the only time to chat, huh?” 

“Thank you, mom.” He sighs softly into the receiver, a quiet showing of his own appreciation. The line goes quiet for a moment, and he can hear his mom’s voice on the other end calling Bella’s name. It’s quiet for another moment before there’s a ruffling sound. 

“Daddy?” A little voice asks into the phone, making Harry have to take a moment to compose himself. A rush of tears fills his eyes too suddenly, and he almost can’t contain himself. He’s been away for three weeks now, and it’s the longest he’s ever been away from his daughter in all the years she’s been around. 

“Hi, sweetheart,” He says into the phone receiver, smiling at the sound of the girl’s voice. He closes his eyes and lets the happiness take over, refusing to acknowledge the anxiety and fear that had been welling up in his stomach for the entire day. There are days he worries she won’t be around to answer the phone at all and then there are days where he knows that she’s invincible, the strongest little girl he’s ever met. 

“Hi, daddy. I miss you.” 

“I miss you too, love. How are you feeling?” He forces himself to focus on the wall in front of him as he talks to her, trying to keep himself aware of where he is, of why he’s doing this. The part of him that misses the girl on the other side of the line more than anything else in the world would rush home in the blink of an eye to be able to wrap her in a hug once again. But that would be a death sentence, and he’s far from ready to accept that. 

“I’m okay,” She says, but just in the tone of her voice, in the low way she speaks, and the absence of her normal constant enthusiasm, Harry can tell she’s in pain. “My stomach hurts, but it’s okay.” He doesn’t let himself cry, this time. The tears threaten to spill over his eyelids, but instead he just smiles through it. 

“How’s grandma?” 

“She’s good. She keeps trying to bake me things, even though I don’t think I could eat another cookie even if I wanted to.” She makes a noise like she’s pretending to throw up, and it makes Harry laugh all over again. She has his sense of humor. Ever since she learned how to talk she’s been telling jokes and smiling and making every person she’s ever met fall in love with her. It’s the part of her that was undeniably  _ him,  _ and every time it comes out of her he can’t help but feel the little bursts of pride. “But she says it’s time for supper, and I have to go now. I love you, Daddy.” 

“I love you too, sweetie. Enjoy your dinner and I’ll see you very soon.” 

“Bye,” She says, but the line doesn’t go dead for almost eight seconds. It isn’t until he sets the phone receiver down that he finally lets himself cry. 

He stares up at the ceiling again and lets the feeling of despair wrap tight around his heart. There are times like this that it feels like barbed wire has made a home wrapped around his organs. Tight and suffocating from the inside. Then there are times where it feels like everything around him is burning and the only option he has it to breathe in the burning air. 

He’s not sure which it is this time. 

A part of him doesn’t know how to handle the heartache, doesn’t know how to handle the pain, doesn’t know how to handle the unfair way that the world has treated someone who doesn’t deserve it at all. 

It doesn’t last long. 

Instead, he gets up and turns the dial on the small TV sitting on the desk across from the bed. None of the other motels he’d been in up to this point had had TVs in them, and it helped him stay disconnected, but he almost felt the need to listen in, to see if anyone was talking about him. The news channel is already on as the image flickers to life, but there’s nothing exciting. The weather is all they drone on about, so he changes the channel until he finds another news station. 

But no matter the news channel, he didn’t hear anything about what he’d done and didn’t so much as notice a single person being suspicious of a criminal travelling across the country. 

With that reassurance in his heart, he flopped back down against the bed and let himself fall asleep. 

 

He drives through another town two weeks later and falls into the same routine he had with Glenwood Falls. The difference this time is that he finds himself in California, in a tiny town that sits about an hour inland of San Francisco. The current of the wind brings the salty smell of the ocean and he can feel it against his skin. 

It’s humid here in a way he’s not used to, but he loves it. A part of him wants to think that he could have gotten used to this, could have come here and lived a life here if things had turned out differently. 

Instead, he falls back into his routine. Into the plan he formed in the previous town. 

Watch, wait, watch, wait, action. 

The town is slightly bigger this time, with almost four thousand people as the population, but it’s no different. At the earliest point in the morning, the streets were abandoned and Harry was able to come in and leave as if he had never even been there. 

There hadn’t even been a security guard inside of the bank. 

It’s almost too easy, he realizes with a sudden wave of shame. The shame is a new feeling, but it comes with an unexpected intensity. With nearly three thousand dollars now sitting in his glove box, he doesn't know what he’s meant to do, or how he’s meant to feel. 

He needs nearly ten thousand, but he isn’t entirely sure if he can bring himself to do this so many more times, if he can force himself to stay away from his home for long enough to get it all this way. He’d tried his best for weeks before he left to think about all the other ways he could have gone about this, yet this was the last outcome he could think of. 

But now he regrets the decision. Regrets ever having gotten in his car that first day he took to the roads with the intention to do this. How can he force himself to keep going, to pretend that he’s a good, law abiding citizen if he were to ever go back? How could he face the people he knows and loves and pretend none of this ever happened?

He can’t even be certain he will ever get to go home at all after all of this, and yet he can’t bring himself to care. As much as it hurts him to be apart from his daughter at all, knowing that all of this will keep her alive in the long run makes it worth it. 

When he first laid eyes on Bella he stopped worrying about himself and only worried about her, he knew that there was nothing else in the world that would ever matter more to him. He’d known in that moment, holding Bella in his arms for the first time, that he would do anything in the world for her. It was in that moment of time that he realized there was nothing more important on the face of the earth than the little girl he could hold in his arms. 

There’d been a time that he’d had two women in his life that he could call the most important people to him - but when Jenna had died, left him with Bella and a broken heart, he didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to handle being a dad, didn’t know how to handle loving someone so much and still having to release her into the world. 

A world that has given her too much pain already, even as young as she is. 

A part of him wishes every day that it was him instead, that he was the one that was sick and dying - that he was the one in pain so she didn’t have to be. If he could take her place, he would do it in a heartbeat without so much as a second thought, and that thought makes him ache. 

He’s angry - he’s angry at the world, at God, at the doctors, and at himself. 

Angry at everything that left her sick and dying and left him with a gun in his hand and guilt in his heart. 

He has no time to waste. 

Even if the rational part of him knows that he should space these out - that he should keep himself from being reckless to the point where he is certain to get caught - but he can’t stop. He wants Bella to get better as soon as she can, and he knows he’ll do anything to make sure that’s exactly what happens. 

His motel this time is across the town from the bank. 

He’d scoped it out once again, drove by one last time before he decided it was time to get a move on with it. But, as soon as he walks into the bank, he shoots a single shot up into the air. It’s the only bullet in the gun, and it’s blank, but he knows that fear is the most motivating emotion. 

Six pairs of terrified eyes immediately meet his own, before everyone is scrambling. The silence is almost deafening and he pauses just for a moment, looking at everyone around him. 

“Get down on the ground, everyone, down on the ground, everyone except you behind the counter, keep your hands up,” He says loudly, voice booming throughout the small space. Five bodies immediately drop to the ground as hushed whispers are shared between them, and he swallows once before he walks up to the counter. It’s yet another test of his strength, yet another test of his strategy, as he forces himself to remain calm and collected. 

The woman in front of him that stands behind the counter is young, mid twenties, maybe. She’s shaking. Her eyes are wide and wet with the beginning threat of tears and Harry hates it. He hates every moment of causing another person fear, but he knows it’s just what he has to do. 

“Everything you have in your drawer, put it in the bag.” He sets a paper bag on top of the counter and slides it over to her, the sliding noise the only sound floating throughout the bank other than the sound of heavy, fearful breathing. 

“I - I’m - can I -” She’s stuttering, but Harry waits, lets her get it out. “I have to push a button.” 

“No, you don’t. Open the drawer, one hand.” She seems frozen in place, and he moves his thumb over the hammer of the gun, making it click. She springs into action as soon as the noise fills the space between them, pulls out handfuls of bills from the drawer and places them right into the bag. 

He’s watching her when he hears footsteps. 

A slightly older man has rose to his feet and he’s fumbling to get something Harry can only assume is a gun from his pants. He’s struggling with it, but Harry doesn’t waste a moment before he reacts. 

He grabs the nearest person on the ground and pulls him close to his chest, Harry’s left forearm around his throat while his right holds the gun to his side. The bag of money is grasped tightly in the hand with his arm against the man’s throat. 

He tries not to let the hard metal of his gun dig too deeply into the man’s flesh, just putting enough pressure so they both know it’s there at all. The man is shorter by just a few inches, but just enough cover to make it more than unlikely that the older man would be able to shoot him without hitting the other man, too. 

The man he’s holding in his arms is breathing heavily beneath the arm against his throat, his hands grasping at the limb nearly blocking his windpipe out of instinct, but Harry isn’t holding him too hard. It’s yet another strategy play, making it look worse than it actually is. He doubts that the hold will even leave a red mark on the man’s skin. 

“You’re gonna put that gun down on the ground and kick it over to me, or this one,” He shakes the man just a bit, “Is going to die.” He keeps his voice steady, forces himself to sound confident in what he’s saying, but really he doesn’t think he could ever kill someone. Doesn’t think he could ever hold it in him to be able to harm someone in such a terrible way. 

A blank shot probably wouldn’t kill the man in his arms, but it would hurt him. And even that is something Harry doesn’t want the guilt of on his chest. 

They stand like that for a moment, but the man doesn’t put his gun down. They stare each other down for a few moments, and each second drags on far longer than it should. 

Two things happen in that moment, and Harry isn’t entirely sure how he’s made the decision to do either of them. He moves the gun up to the man in his arm’s jaw, holds it there instead and watches as the older man’s face changes to something a little more akin to fear, and then he starts making his way out of the bank, still holding on to the man. 

There are no sirens and no cops as he forces the man into the passenger's seat of the car where the lock has been broken since he first got it. It takes him about three seconds to climb into the driver’s side of the car and speed down the road. 

It’s deadly silent other than the labored sound of both of their breathing as Harry peels the mask and glasses off of his face with one hand and tosses them on the ground at the man’s feet. With one hand on the wheel and the other still holding his gun, he speeds down the highway. His speedometer passes ninety without him so much as thinking twice of it, other thoughts racing at lightning speed through his mind that keep him distracted. 

It takes a moment for him to realize exactly what he’s done. 

He looks over at the man in his passenger seat and the sinking feeling in his chest only grows deeper as a nauseous feeling takes over his entire body. The man doesn’t really look afraid, but he doesn’t look the most comfortable, either, and Harry doesn’t know what to do. His hands grip the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles go white. 

He never meant to hurt another person, but now he knows he has, and everything about that makes him feel sick. All of this was meant to do something good, as much as it was disguised. Everything he’s done, as horrible as it’s been, has been for a reason, except  _ this.  _ This is the only thing he can’t even justify in his own mind, and it makes him feel even worse. He doesn’t feel well, doesn’t feel like himself, doesn’t feel like the same person he felt like this morning. It doesn’t sit well with him at all. 

He knows he has to get the man out of his car, but he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he were to just leave him on the side of the road in the middle of the desert. So he keeps going forward until he finds the nearest gas station. 

“Oh, fuck,” Harry says, pulling off into the parking lot of the gas station. The car comes to an abrupt halt as he sits himself into the spot. His body feels heavy with the guilt and his heart is pounding. “Fuck, fuck. Fuck. Get out. Go. Get out.” 

“What?” The man asks, and Harry’s head snaps to the side to look over at him. 

“I said, get  _ out, _ ” He pauses, his voice just barely above a whisper as he tacks on a soft, “Please.” 

It’s weird, watching as he almost pauses - freezes and waits as if he’s not entirely sure he  _ wants  _ to get out. But before long his hand moves to the handle and he pulls it. The door clicks and the door moves ever so slightly, but it doesn’t open all the way. It sticks, and Harry only groans, hands going to his face. It’s too much, all of it’s far too much to handle and he suddenly feels like he can’t breathe. 

He reaches over and pulls the handle a little up and to the right, the same way he’s always had to pull it to get it to open, awkwardly pushing himself over the other man’s body. “Go.” 

The man finally crawls out of the car and closes the door weakly. He stands there instead of running away, instead of fleeing like Harry had assumed he would have, but Harry doesn’t let himself dwell on it. Doesn’t have the mental capacity at the moment to think about what the other man could possibly thinking. 

Harry watches as the man takes a few steps back and just watches him right back, eyes trained on Harry the entire time before he drives off once again. 

 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” He repeats to himself as he drives, trying to clear everything that just happened out of his head. The tightness has spread through his entire body, now, and the stress doesn’t leave him like he’d thought it would. Instead of the images and the thoughts and the feelings going away, all they do is get stronger. 

Everything he’d done to that man went against his own morals. 

Everything. 

He hates the idea of stealing at all, but the part of him that cares more about his daughter than anything else in the world made him get over that quickly enough. 

But what he’d done to that man went far beyond what he’s always told himself he would never do.  _ Could  _ never do. A part of him thought he wouldn’t even be able to do it properly, since he’s always gone into the bank with only a single bullet in his gun, and that was just for his own sake if he were to get caught. Shooting it up into the air took that option away from him, anyway.  

The thoughts of everything he’s done throughout all of this come rushing back to his mind, but the most obvious and the most painful continue to be what he did to him. To the man who’s name he didn’t even get, to the man who he knows will haunt him for the rest of his life in the ghost of guilt. 

Holding a gun to his head. 

_ Kidnapping him.  _

Even if he’d only been in his car for less than ten minutes - it was ten minutes too long and the guilt is all consuming. Tears slowly start to well up in his eyes all over again, and his lungs clench with the horror he feels at himself. He knows he can’t stop driving until he’s far out of town - but he still feels like he’s going to throw up. 

He forces himself to drive to the neighboring city. The road stretches on but the desert fades to mountains and everything feels ever so slightly less overwhelming. A part of him isn’t sure why it feels better to have a change of scenery, but he doesn’t question it. The chill of the air bites against his skin as he gains more altitude, but it’s a welcome feeling. 

It’s a three hour drive, and it feels too far with the tightness in his muscles. Even as much as he’d wanted nothing more than to force himself to go even further, to go to the next city even further away, he knew he couldn’t bring himself to. He’s not even across the california border into Nevada, but as he pulls off into the town, he finds he doesn’t mind. When evening rolls around, he’ll tune back in to the news - and that thought makes another wave of anxiety flare up inside of him. 

He parks behind the building once again and takes a moment to switch out the plates on the back of his car. He’d bought a few different sets off of junkyard cars before he’d made his way on this trip, with full intentions to change them after every robbery. 

He tosses the old plate into the dumpster and makes sure it stays buried under another trash bag. 

It’s almost cathartic how he gets out of the headspace he’s been stuck in and almost immediately feels the nausea seep away from his bones. It takes a few more deep breaths, but before long, he can relax. The tension falls away from his body, and everything feels alright. 

The guilt still gnaws at his heart, but he can only hope that, too, will fade in time. 

The humidity fades as he gets further away from the ocean, and he can’t even smell the salt in the air anymore. But a part of him doesn’t miss it. Home doesn’t have the salty smell, the wetness in the air that sticks to his skin. Home doesn’t have any of this, but home has the one thing he really wants most. 

He grabs his backpack from the backseat of his car and slings it over his shoulders, rolling his joints with the heaviness of it. The lobby has air conditioning, which is almost strange with the slight chill to the outside air, but he doesn’t question it. The cold air is nicer than the heat that the desert had brought him for the last two and a half weeks. 

“Hi, I need a single room for the night please,” He says to the boy at the counter. He’s young, scrawny and bored looking as he grabs the book from the counter. 

“Name?” 

“Joshua Ernest.” He opens his wallet and skims through the pocket where he’d stored the three different ID cards he’d brought along with him. With the months of planning he’d spent on this, it wasn’t often that something happened he hadn’t already thought might happen. All of it had been thought through time and time again until he’d nearly exhausted himself with it. He slides the card over with the name he’d given and watches as the boy barely so much as glances at it. “And I’d like to pay the extra fee to pay in cash.” 

“Alright, sir. That deposit can be picked back up at check out tomorrow morning.” He hums his agreement. “That will be thirteen dollars.” He hands over the bills without thinking too much about it. 

“How much will I get back at checkout?” 

“Five fifty.” 

“Great.” The boy hands his key and the room number over to him and Harry heads out the door without so much as a second thought. Every piece of him wants out - wants to get as far away from everything as possible. He’s not even sure where he’s running at this point, but all he does know is that the feeling is overwhelming. 

He sets the bag on his back down on the desk when he walks through the door of the room. Dead bolting the door behind him and closing the curtains bathes the room in darkness, a blanket of security that he can take a few short moments to feel safe in. After three deep breaths, he opens his bag and pulls out the envelopes of cash. 

It’s a thick stack in his hand. Almost enough that it feels like it  _ should  _ be enough, like it should be more than enough to cover everything and more than what he needs. But a part of him knows that he’s still farther from that than he would like to admit. 

Without letting himself count, he sorts the bills out into their respective face values. Some of the ones are crumpled and clearly used while some of the bills are fresh and brand new. All he can make himself do is focus on the feeling of the paper against his finger tips. The pile of the twenties is the highest, and for some reason that leaves him with a bad feeling in his stomach. He’d had this sick thought when all of this started that every bill that would have been handed to him would have been a hundred. He’d thought that everything would have worked out after one - maybe two - times. He’d had these fantasies that nothing bad could possibly happen, even if he’s the one doing the bad.

Realizing that everything he’d hoped for had been wrong is a feeling that doesn’t settle into his stomach very well. It leaves him tense all over again, strained and hot and panicky. Every feeling that crawls up his throat is less pleasant than the last and he’s not entirely sure how he wants to deal with it. 

He forces himself to count the bills instead of focusing on his own thoughts. Counting requires nothing but thinking about numbers. Counting doesn’t involve feelings, doesn’t involve anything but math. That’s easy. 

Total, he has 2,442 dollars. It’s a lot more than he thought he would have come out with, but it’s still not enough. Just like he’d worried would happen. Going this pace, he has a bad feeling he’ll need some kind of change of something. Staying in the banks longer and letting the tellers go and get more money from the back vault will only lead to him getting caught. More time for the police to catch on and realize something is wrong only leads to higher risk. So, he knows he can’t do that. It’s too much to risk everything - including everything he’s done for Bella - to make this faster. 

The other option is just to hit more banks, more frequently. 

That option leaves a bad taste in his mouth just because the probability of getting caught only goes up more the more often he strikes, too. He runs through the mental game theory math, tries his best to think of a way that could possibly be a win-win, but in the end, everything is losing on his end. Cutting his losses and making the least of them is all he can do. 

He puts four hundred dollars into six different envelopes and seals them shut. The remaining change left over stays in his pocket. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to last him a while longer. He’s run on the philosophy that all he can do is spend pennies on himself it it means another dollar goes to his daughter. 

He addresses each of the envelopes to Zayn - the only friend who he’d told about all of this. He hadn’t been entirely supportive at first, but perhaps he’d seen just a shred of the desperation that Harry had been feeling, and that was all it really took to get him to agree. Once the money showed up, Zayn would be making random, anonymous deposits into a charity that the town had started in Harry’s daughter’s name. 

It’s an intricate plan, and it had taken far more planning than Harry had really thought necessary, but once the two of them had worked everything out, he stopped worrying about it. The two of them together are unstoppable, and he doesn’t think there’s a single thing that could lead all of this back to Zayn in the end, anyway. 

With half the envelopes in his pocket, he makes his way to the post office. One of them goes into the drop box, one of them into a second, larger yellow envelope, and a third into a package box. With three different kinds of packaging, all he can do is hope that all of the suspicions get even lower. 

The air gets colder as the sun sinks below the horizon, and Harry stops in yet another diner on his way home. He doesn’t sit inside this time, but instead he takes his food back to the hotel with him, ready to settle in for the night. The bigger part of him is overwhelmed, tired, and stressed and he doesn’t know how to handle it. It’s more than he’s ever had to deal with, but it’s far more than he thinks is fair for him to be forced to deal with, either. 

Sometimes he just has to remind himself that life isn’t fair, that there’s no rule book the universe or God has to follow to keep him or anyone in his life happy. A part of the thought is calming, but the other part just makes the ache in his heart grow stronger. Makes everything seem a little darker, somehow. 

Opening the door to his room once again, he’s ready to collapse onto his bed. The air conditioning is still on full blast, just the way he’d left it, and all of the lights are still on, creating that illusion that he’d been here all along. 

He’s exhausted, the tiredness resting in his bones. His eyelids can barely stay open, as he takes a few more steps inside. As soon as his shoes come off, the smallest amount of frustration seeps out of his muscles. 

His eyes fly wide open when he sees another person in his room, sitting on his bed with a book in his hand. It takes him a moment to fully register what’s happening, what’s going on around him, before he recognizes the man. With his shoes off and keys sitting on the side table on the opposite side of the bed, he knows he won’t get far - knows there’s little to nothing he can do but stand there and wait to see what will happen. 

“ _ What the fuck _ ?” Is his instinctual reaction as he meets the gaze of the same man from the bank three hours away. His bag drops from his hand and all he can do is stare in shock. 

  
  
  
  


Louis

 

The smaller part of Louis is still in shock as he stands there and watches as the car speeds away from him. The larger, slightly less rational part of him, wants to follow the car. His hands are still shaking as he stands there, completely still. The wind is blowing, moving little pieces of his hair around and into his eyes, but he can’t even be bothered to move them. 

His entire life has been dedicated to studying people, to studying behavior, to figuring out what goes on in a person’s head when they do things. 

There’s absolutely nothing around him, just the barren gas station with a single semi truck sitting at a pump getting gas. He walks up to the man pumping gas into the truck and reaches into his pocket, finding a twenty dollar bill crumpled up inside. “Hey, are you going south?” He asks the man, holding the money so it’s visible. 

“Yeah, what about it?”   
“Twenty dollars says you take me where that red car is going and don’t ask why.” The man stares at him for a moment, a look on his face that tells exactly how confused he is about the entire situation, but he nods. 

“Alright, then. That red car was going awful fast, but this highway don’t branch off into a different city for a long ways, so we just might be able to catch it.” 

“Perfect.” The man hangs up the gas pump where it belongs and walks around the truck and climbs in. Louis climbs in beside him and puts his seat belt on as the truck rumbles to life and slowly starts moving forward. His heart is hammering in his chest as they make their way to the highway and pick up speed, slowly getting closer to the man who had literally just held him hostage. 

So, perhaps following the man who’d held him hostage at gunpoint wasn’t the option most people would choose willingly. Perhaps it’s even a stupid decision. But he can’t help it, really. On his quest for knowledge, if he puts himself in danger, then so be it. 

 

“Shit, there it is!” He says about an hour later. They’ve caught up to the little red car, speeding along the emptiness of the road, and he leans down. 

“Well, what do you want me to do kid? He’s still goin’ and I’m only on route to stay on this road till the next town.” 

“If he keeps going through the next town will another twenty cut it to keep following him?” The man sighs, gives him a questioning look from the corner of his eye. Louis knows he’s being annoying, knows his request is obnoxious, but he can only hope that the offer of what he thinks is quite a bit of money will make up for it. 

“Alright, kid. But not much further than that.” 

“Deal.” 

  
  


The car pulls off in the next town.

Louis almost can't believe it when he watches the car take the exit towards a tiny town that Louis didn't even know existed, and the driver of the truck follows. He can't help but worry that the man driving the car might have a suspicion that he's being followed, that he might just be trying to do something to see if he is, but he's always been a pro at over thinking these things. There would be no reason for him to suspect that. Trucks travel down high ways every day, and small towns with cheap diners and empty parking lots are hot spots for the drivers to sleep.

His heart is hammering in his chest as he watches the car pull off into a motel parking lot, and all he can do is keep watching, the cogs turning in his head.

"Alright, kid. Go catch your boyfriend or whatever the hell is going on," The driver says, pulling over to the side of the road and clicking the button to unlock the doors. He hadn't even noticed that he'd been locked in, otherwise he might have had a burst of anxiety about it. It should be worrying how distracted he is, how hyper focused he feels just on catching up to the driver of that car, but it's the only thing coursing through his mind.

"Thank you again," He calls out, jumping out of the truck. The driver speeds off, and then he's alone.

He stares at the motel building, inconspicuous and almost unquestionable. At a first glance it's gentle, soft, like the kind of place he could see himself stopping at to sleep with his family during a long road trip. Yet, at the same time, he can see what would draw someone on the run to the same place, too. Just in the fact that it is so innocent looking. Rose bushes line the entire outside of the building, red brick walls coated with creeping vines.

He sits on a bench across the street and forces himself to think about what's next.

Watching the building, he lets himself really think about all of this, think about how stupid it all is, really, how he's about to willingly put himself back into a situation that could take his life. Yet, the mind of criminals is something he's been interested in since he was a child. From the first time he picked up a novel about a serial killer, all he could do was think about it.

What could possibly make someone do something so evil?

Is it innate?

What drives people to do bad things and what makes them continue doing them?

They're just a few of the questions that are circulating through his mind as he stares at the building.

Perhaps bank robbery isn't a petty crime, and perhaps it's stupid of him not to stick to interviews at prisons where he knows he can be kept safe when he's questioning these criminals. But a part of him wants nothing more than to experience it first hand, feel the experience himself and see if there's a piece to it in that that drives these people.

He's learned that confinement gives people a lot of time to manifest stories and details and reasons in their mind. Human motivation is so, so limited, and capturing it in it's truest form is the only way he can ever get the real details that he's lusted after for so long. So maybe it's stupid of him to thrust himself right back into the scene of the crime. Maybe it will kill him. His mother would always throw that horrid rhyme in his face when he did something stupid as a child.

"Curiosity killed the cat!" She'd say, apron tied around her face with flour dusted all over it.

"But satisfaction brought it back," His father would say, the same daring twinkle in his eye that Louis felt in his heart as he read those novels.

The car is in plain sight, teasing him, questioning him, daring him to form some kind of plan that will let him get inside of the man's head.

A few different ideas run through his head, but it isn't until a long while later when he watches the same man from the car walk out of the side door of the hotel and make his way down the street. His hands are tucked into the pockets of his coat, and he's changed his clothes. He looks like any other normal person that Louis would expect to see on the street, and something about that doesn't seem right to him.

It's yet another thing that has always fascinated him about those they do bad. They look just like everyone else on the outside, even if their minds are darker than anything anyone could think of.

Though - he reminds himself - he can't make assumptions. He's diving into this on the basis of his research, so going into it with preconceived notions about the man will skew his views.

His plan forms as he gets up and makes his way across the street, opening the door of the building and heading straight for the stairs. There's a woman sitting at the front desk, reading a book, but he makes sure to catch her attention. He sends her a smile as he walks by and hides around the corner, stands there for a long moment and counts down one hundred and eighty seconds. Three minutes would have given him more than enough time to walk up the stairs to the highest room if that's what he should have been doing.

Then he walks back into the lobby, shoes clacking against the tiled floor.

"Oh, excuse me, miss?" He says, walking into the lobby. His heart is thrumming, but it's easy. He'd been a second author on a paper about lying and how some people are good liars while others are bad. He knows all the tricks, all the ways to hold himself, where to look, how to speak, to keep himself from looking like a liar.

"How can I help you, Sir?"

"This is going to sound ridiculous, but my brother was just through here? Tall guy, curly brown hair with green eyes? He told me to come and knock on his door, but he didn't answer. So I'm thinking he must be out to dinner or something. Do you think I could get a second key for the room?" She looks at him for a moment, like she's assessing if he's telling the truth, and he just gives her a smile. He's always been good at concealing the anxiety in his expressions.

She takes a moment to respond, but when she does, it's with a smile. "Of course, sir. Here's that key for you." He nods and takes the brass colored piece of metal from her, tossing a thank you over his shoulder as he makes his way down the hall.

The room number is printed on the key, and he sends a silent thank you to the universe for exactly how easy this has all somehow been. Perhaps it all happens for a reason, perhaps all of this was meant to happen and that's why it's been almost eerily easy.

He makes his way to the second floor, heart hammering in his chest as he walks. The carpet is an aged champagne pink, decorated with swirling patterns of circles and he focuses on that between checking door numbers as he walks.

He stops in front of room 228, heart still pounding in his chest. The key slides into the latch easily, and it opens with a cathartic click when he twists the knob. With a squeak from the hinges, he pushes the door open and makes his way inside, closing the door behind him softly.

There's a duffle bag on the desk, but besides that, it doesn't look like the man has so much as been in the room at all. A set of keys sits on the bedside table, which he figured would be there since the man had walked out the door rather than drove, but it's all still an odd feeling. The blankets on the bed are still pristine, not even a wrinkle settled into the cloth, and the atmosphere is cold. He's always felt weird in hotel rooms, felt like the chilly air and the smell of cleaner made it all feel artificial, but this is on a completely different level. It feels artificial both in the way that it's a fake setting of a comfortable living place, a put together human size doll house for people to come and pretend they're comfortable sleeping in a bed they can't be sure is clean before moving on to the next day, then fake in the way that it seems so normal. It seems entirely normal to have keys set on a table, a bag, little pieces of life.

The walks to the bag and opens it, pulls out the gun that's sitting inside of it and drags the chair at the desk across the room.

His hands feel numb with the anxiety of it all, and he almost can't believe that he's doing this. He should just leave. The rational part of his brain is telling him he needs to leave, run, get himself a car back home and go back to what he'd been doing before all of this happened.

But he hasn't come this far to give up when he's already so close.

It's two hours before his ass goes numb and he gets up, starts pacing around the room. He'd gone through the bag a little deeper and found several hundred dollars inside of envelopes, so he knows the man will be back. He highly doubts someone with enough motivation to rob a bank would be stupid enough to leave that much money behind without the intention of not returning.

Even if the man knows he's here, it wouldn't make any sense for him to not come back and try to fight his way to the money. It wouldn't make sense. So, Louis keeps waiting.

He's standing beside the bed when he hears the door click open and the alarm bells start going off in his head all over again. He gets onto the bed silently, sits with his back against the headboard and points the gun in his hand forward, looking towards the little hallway that connects the room to the door.

It's quiet other than the rustling from the hallway. He's not sure what the man is doing, but he holds his breath, keeps himself silent as he waits. He can hear the blood rushing through his veins in his ears and the thudding of his heart is deafening.

It feels like hours as the seconds tick on before the man finally appears in the room and Louis holds the gun up a little higher.

"What the fuck," The man says when he comes into the room. The bag in his hand falls to the floor with a thud. "What the fuck, oh my god. What the fuck?" The man repeats, his eyes wide as he stands there, frozen.

"Hi," Louis starts. "Go sit down in that chair. I have a few things I want to ask you." It takes a moment for the man to move, like he doesn't understand the commands he's been given, but before long he goes, feet dragging. He's wearing white tube socks, Louis notices, looking down at his feet as he walks. His jaw is tense, too, with a vein bulging on his neck. He clenches his fists for a moment as he sits down on the chair, his entire body tense. "Great. Alright. So, I have a deal for you. It's up to you, of course, if you'd like to take it or leave it. Doesn't effect me very much either way, so I figured I'd offer."

"What kind of deal could you possibly - what is going on?"

"Alright. So, your first option: let me go with you. You continue doing whatever it is that you're doing. Robbing banks, whatever. I'll ask you questions, whenever I want, and you'll answer them truthfully. Then, when I've gotten everything I need from you, you'll leave me in the nearest major city with an airport and I fly home. No questions asked, no one has to know what happened."

"And the second option?"

"I shoot you in the leg right now and run. You took me hostage and I grabbed your gun when you were in the shower. I had to shoot you to get away because I feared for my life. Your car keys will come with me. The nearest police station is only a few blocks away and I ran track in college so I know exactly how long it would take me to get there."

The man's jaw drops, and Louis watches as he practically goes through every stage of grief right in front of him.

"How do you know I won't just kill you while you're asleep or something?"

"Are you agreeing to let me tag along?"

"I don't think it's really agreeing considering my other option is literally getting shot!" The man says, his voice raised, the sound loud in the small room.

"Be quiet! There are other occupants in this hotel, dumbass."

"Jesus Christ. Fine. Yes that's me agreeing. Fuck."

"Alright. Then I know you won't kill me in my sleep because your gun wasn't loaded where it was sitting in your bag. There's no ammo in the bag, either. So naturally I'm assuming your gun wasn't loaded when you had it pointed at me earlier."

"Bold assumption."

"Am I right?"

The man sighs, runs his hands over his face and looks down at the ground.

"Yeah," He says after a while. Louis would feel bad if he hadn't had a gun pointed at him earlier, but a part of him only feels like this is fair, a good serving of revenge - at least from him - has never hurt anyone too badly.

Louis doesn't see any evidence of a lie on his face. Less than three percent of the population is known to be a good enough liar that a trained person can't detect it, and if this man is somehow a part of that population, then he'll happily bet his life with 97% chances.

"I also found six fake IDs in your bag. So, which is your real name?"

"Is this one of the questions that if I don't answer honestly I get shot and you run to the cops?"

"Suppose not. But I'd like something to call you."

"Harry, is my name."

"Great. It's nice to officially meet you, Harry. I'm Louis." He puts the gun down, then, slides it into the side drawer beside the bed and walks over to the chair the man is sitting in, then holds his hand out.

Harry eyes him again, looks at him suspiciously before he reaches out and shakes his hand.

Maybe not the best start to a weird relationship Louis has ever had, but it's a start, and that's all he needs.

 

The passenger side of the car is much different when he's not fearing for his life.

He'd slept beside Harry last night, solely for the lack of other options, but perhaps sleeping isn't the best way to describe what he'd done. He'd barely slept at all, mostly just rested his eyes more than anything. But it's alright, because he's certain at this point that he's just running on adrenaline.

The man beside him hasn't said a word since the night before and the discomfort between the two of them is tangible. It makes sense - really - why there would be such an air of awkwardness, but it certainly doesn't mean he likes it.

A part of him wants to attempt some kind of small talk, wants to try and get rid of the discomfort, but he doesn't know how. The situation he's found himself in is so far from what he's used to, so far from anything that he knows how to deal with.

"So, where are you from?" Louis asks after an hour or so of driving. He's tired, his eyelids heavy and drooping. He figures he'll try and sleep once they're on a decent stretch of highway, when he can buckle himself in tightly and sleep comfortably without worrying the other man is going to bolt. It's odd, he thinks, how he's done a complete flip. He'd started as the hostage and now he could probably say that Harry's the one being held against his will.

It's not entirely accurate, he thinks, but it's the closest Louis can really think of what to call it. It makes guilt gnaw at his stomach to think that he's forcing someone to do something that they didn't want to do, but then he has to remind himself that he's not. Harry is just going about and doing exactly what he otherwise would have been doing. The only difference is that he now has company.

"Ohio."

"What part?"

"Ashtabula."

"What brings you down to California, then? You're awfully far."

"Just sight seeing," Harry says, rolling his eyes. He drives with only one hand, gripped at the bottom of the steering wheel while his other arm rests against the window. He looks more relaxed now, compared to what he had been the night previous, at least. Maybe that's a poor comparison, considering Louis had had a gun pointed at him the night before - and he's certainly familiar with the feeling that comes with being on the other side - but it feels like it needs to be made. "I've already agreed to answer all your questions. There's no need to dive into the deep ones right away. Ask me some more boring shit."

It's Louis' turn to roll his eyes, then.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty six."

He asks - as Harry said - a few more boring questions, only getting one word answers in response. It gets truly before long, so he gives up after scribbling it all down in his journal quickly. It’s a journal he’d bought for himself at the beginning of the year, some kind of unspoken promise that he would fill it with something, with something that would change the world. Some kind of research of study that would take him to the next level. 

But now that he’s looking at the pages with scribbles of a few short details, that promise already feels broken. Perhaps it had been naïve to think that Harry would have just opened up to him so easily. 

Or not  _ perhaps _ , it definitely  _ was _ naïve, and he almost regrets ever thinking it. A part of him had thought that this would all be easy, that nearly taking Harry hostage and trying to pry information out of him would somehow make his life easy. But now he knows that it's only going to make it harder. Getting information out of a willing participant in his lab is hard enough, and now he’s on the complete other end of the spectrum with a participant who perhaps isn’t entirely willing. 

Yet, a part of him is just fine with that. 

He's always been the type of person to run towards a challenge, and this is no different. If it takes effort to break Harry open, to crawl inside of his head and find out everything he needs to know about the inner workings of his mind, then he’s ready for that. 

He curls himself up against the door, hand clutching on the seatbelt as the car speeds down the highway. The sun is bright and relentless through the windows, but he still drifts off to sleep easily. 

 

Louis is in an office, with completely white walls and without a window. He can tell he's dreaming, yet he can't force himself to wake up, and nothing is making the racing feeling in his heart calm down. He feels sick with it, and a part of him wants nothing more than to get out. On the walls, his name is plastered on newspaper snippets, covering the walls all around him. The first study that he’d ever been famous because of. 

The pictures of him that are all over the pages move, but instead of the smiling version of him that everyone else has seen, he can only see his bosses pushing him to already start the next biggest study, the next biggest finding. Threats of being fired. Threats of being discredited. 

It's a dream he has often, and a dream he hates more and more every time he has it. It's always the same looming feeling of discomfort and unease that takes him over whenever he realizes the familiar scene.

The room fades, the walls falling back and revealing the scene of his own lab. In that moment it’s almost as if he’s the one being studied. 

"Oh, Dr. Tomlinson," A man with black hair and a sharp jawline says loudly, appearing from nowhere. His voice booms in the completely quiet room, bouncing off of the walls. "I expect you have new research for me today, or if not you do know how much the department has been considering downsizing our... redundant employees."

He's not redundant, he’s  _ not, _ and the idea that he's getting to that point makes him feel sick.

 

He wakes up with a start, his heart racing again.

Harry looks over to him but doesn't say anything, but he doesn't blame him. The car is still going, but the sun has gotten higher in the sky and the clock on the dashboard reads 1:34. The man is clearly still upset, but Louis doesn't mind. A part of him knew that he'd go into all of this and come out without any good feelings about Harry. Coming into a situation with the intent of studying a criminal hadn't left him with a whole lot of room to make friends.

But the dream stays with him. He'd gone to college with an open heart and dreams that he had been certain he was going to reach. Every part of him had been so sure that he was going to author papers and be the next amazing researcher that made breakthrough discovery after breakthrough discovery. He'd been so certain that he'd entered the field at just the right time, with the recognition of mental illness and with the beginnings of all kinds of research in the field being put out into the world.

Yet, fresh out of college, every time he had tried to come up with an idea for a new test or study, he was shot down, rejected in the same way and left with nothing but an ache in his heart. He'd gotten his PhD after that, forced himself to become a more profound man in the field with the hopes that that would lead him to having more chances, yet all it did was leave him with the same amount of chances with a slightly bigger paycheck.

It wasn't exactly the best feeling, but he'd managed. Managed until he grew so bored of it that he began doing low budget experiments with using college students as his researching assistants, only then to finally do some work that he got recognition for.

His study on love. On need. The studies that common people could read about in the paper and find they related to it. In the span of a few weeks, everything blew up. 

He was famous in his field, a star researcher.

He'd gotten a job offer at a different company that paid better and would allow him to be the director of experiments and procedures, but then it had been his own fault when he'd run dry on ideas with nothing else he could think of to study.

It was only then that he slowly got more interested in the psychology behind what makes people bad and he'd gotten the chance to work with other people who were in the process of studying exactly that, and it made it all even more worth it.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be as relatable to most people, learning about the science behind evil, but he didn’t care as much about any of that anymore. None of that mattered. 

But, maybe that's why he'd felt so compelled to force his way into Harry's car and into his life. Or maybe he just has some unresolved problems that he certainly doesn't have the time or the mental stamina to dig in to.

Just knowing that this is something that he's getting to study first hand before anyone else has had the chance, just knowing that his name will be in the slot where the first author's name always goes, it's enough.

Maybe it's vain.

Maybe he doesn't care.

 

"You know, this might be a bit more pleasant for both of us if you didn't act like you'd rather off yourself than let me be here," Louis says, looking over towards Harry. He has both of his hands on the steering wheel and there's a scowl etched into his features. He certainly doesn't look happy at all, but really he looks angry. Louis gets it, he does, but it doesn't mean he's not right. Maybe the man doesn't want him here at all, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But that doesn't mean that he can't at least attempt to be somewhat pleasant, right?

"See, you're forgetting the fact that I would rather off myself than let you stay here." It's a bold thing to say, but his face doesn't give away any signs that he's lying. Louis just rolls his eyes and turns to look out the window again. He doesn't know where they are or where they're headed, but the landscape is pretty. The mountains are high all around them, with the road sliced out in a perfect winding pattern that he can imagine in some kind of movie landscape.

"Then why let me stay?" He's never been afraid to challenge someone like this, never been afraid to dig a little too deep for answers that he probably doesn't deserve, but it doesn't bother him. He likes seeing how people answer his questions - whether the answers are truthful or just things that have been said to get him off their backs. It doesn't bother him in either case.

"I have other things to worry about than myself," Harry says and Louis frowns just a bit. It's a strange answer, and it's certainly not what he had been expecting. He'd thought he would get something like, then I wouldn't be able to buy a new boat with all my cash, or something about what he's planning on doing with all of his money. Or maybe he thought he would have been shot down with no chance of getting an answer. But instead, he'd gotten something that seemed entirely truthful.

Even if it's clearly not the whole truth, it's something, and now that he has something, he knows he can get just about anything out of the other man.

"And what would that be?"

"It doesn't matter." That's all it takes to shut Louis down for now.

It clearly does matter, especially is Harry is doing all of this for other reasons. Maybe another person? Perhaps a debt that he owes and needs to repay. There are so many possibilities that could lead to him doing all of this that aren't directly for him, and that's something that draws Louis in even further.

What could possibly drive a man to risk destroying his entire life? What could he be working towards that would be worth fixing even if he never gets a chance to see it?

Louis doesn't say anything else, but rather just turns to look out the window once again, eyeing the landscape around them.

 

They spend the entire day on the road, only pulling off once for gas.

"Stay here," Harry says sternly. It's the only thing he's said to him since their last conversation, but Louis figures he deserves that, at least a little. He fishes five dollars out of his pocket and hands it to Harry. "Will you get me something to eat then, at least?" Harry just rolls his eyes, "And yourself something, too, if you want." He's not sure why he offers that. Maybe some kind of peace offering, some kind of something that he hopes will make Harry at least say something to him.

Yet, the man still doesn't say anything, just sighs and takes the bill before he makes his way inside of the little gas station.

Sunset is big and bold over the desert mountains. The sky is lit up slightly pink, mixed with a few dashes of orange in the clouds. They're alone at the gas station, the only car at the pumps and Harry looks to be the only person inside besides the clerk. A sign a few miles back had claimed that this was the only gas station for another hundred miles, that they had better fill up now or else they'd get stranded in the desert.

A good marketing scheme, Louis thinks.

When Harry returns, he has a few different bags of chips in his hands as well as two pre-made sandwiches. He hands them to Louis through the open window without a word and starts pumping gas into his car, leaning back against the side of it. Louis can't help but look at him, can't help but keep thinking about what could possibly have led him to all of this. Standing there, just looking out into the distance, he looks defeated, tired, broken in a way Louis hadn't noticed before. He looks sad, then, instead of angry like Louis has seen up until then.

He hears the click of the gas tank being full, then waits a few seconds before Harry gets back into the car.

"Thanks," The other man says, opening one of the bags of chips. They hadn't stopped for the entire day to eat and he'd heard Harry's stomach growling a few times throughout the day, but he'd decided not to say anything. It felt a little rude to comment on it, even if he'd been hungry, too.

Maybe it was a little unnecessary to give someone who robs banks money, but it felt like the right thing to do. Or maybe it's just because he's hungry and it wouldn't have felt right to ask Harry to get him something without getting something for himself, too. He's not sure what he's doing, but whatever it is, he can only hope it pays off, somehow.

He eats his chips quietly as Harry drives and he keeps looking out the window.

 

A few hours later, they pull off to the side of the road.

Louis' heart rate slowly picks up as Harry turns the car off and they sit there, the darkness of the stars completely surrounding the two of them. There's nothing for hundreds of miles in any direction - Louis only knows that because he'd been paying attention. He has a gun in his pocket but it's not loaded, and he knows there's absolutely nothing he could do if Harry wanted to hurt him.

This would be a good place to do it, too. Kill him and dump his body and there would never be any evidence of it. No one would ever find him out here.

He can already imagine the headlines. Researcher gone Rogue, killed by the ambitions of his own work.

Maybe it's vain, again, to think about dying and only wondering what people would think of him once he's gone. Harry is silent for a long while as the minutes tick on, and eventually the anxiety inside of Louis' chest dims down. All of this - the hesitation, the silence, the tension - it's telling. He doesn't think that Harry is going to kill him anymore. Rather, he thinks this is all some kind of game that they're playing with each other. The game of trying to figure out who has the upper hand.

In this situation, it's clear Harry does. Louis can't run to the police now. He has nothing on the other man except the fact that he's here with him. But Harry doesn't really have any kind of upper hand here, either, unless he is a killer. Which, thinking back, Louis still doesn't think he is. If he wanted to be a killer, if he truly had no mercy in that way, he would have killed the old man that stood up to him in the bank. Mr.Moodey. An old man who was diagnosed with lung cancer two years back and given thirty six months to live.

He had every reason to stand up to a stranger in a bank with a gun, yet Harry let him live. Louis can't help but wonder if that would have been the case if he would have known that Mr.Moodey was on his deathbed already.

"Listen to me, alright?" Harry says, finally turning towards him for the first time all day. "You are not going to fuck this up for me. I don't care what you have to do. Whatever you think you're getting out of this, I don't care. But you are not going to ruin this for me. You're going to do exactly what I tell you and you're not gonna say shit about it, got it?" Louis just looks at him, eyebrows furrowed and a small frown on his face.

"Alright," He finally says, but the look on Harry's face doesn't change. He still looks angry, confused, upset.

"You're going to stay in the trunk of the car and not move. You're not going to make a noise. No one is going to know you're in there and no one is going to have any reason to think of this car as suspicious. Got it? If you're sitting out here, someone is going to recognize you and that will ruin this. So you're going to stay hidden. Then, when we're out of the town, I'll let you back into the front seat." Louis doesn't like small spaces. He never has. They make him feel like he's suffocating, but for some reason, he still agrees. Just nods his head slowly because that feels like the only thing he's really capable of doing at all.

"You're going to rob another bank, then?" Harry scowls again, and Louis can just barely make out the features of his face in the complete darkness, only illuminated by the moonlight. It looks like he doesn't want to answer, but Louis already knows. He's not sure why he's even asking. Maybe it's just to hear it out of the man's mouth, to hear him admit it out loud. Is it easier to do bad things when you don't admit that you're doing them? It is easier to break laws and hurt people if you just don't acknowledge that that's what you're doing?

"Obviously," Harry finally says, but then he's turning the car back on. The blinker sound is loud in the otherwise silent car as he pulls back onto the road. There isn't another car around them, and that confuses Louis just a bit. Why follow such a simple rule when no one is watching, only to later rob people at gun point?

Harry is an enigma to him. Everything he does only manages to confuse Louis a little more, and it makes his head ache in a way no one ever has before. He's the strangest person that Louis has ever met, and that's easy to admit.

"In what town?"

"Listen, I don't know what you're getting at with all of this. I don't really care, either, if I'm honest. Research or whatever, but I'm not going to tell you much of anything related to my actual plans. We can talk about them afterwards, if that's what you insist on. But before they happen, you don't get to know. I don't need you running off and telling anyone what I'm going to do." It's the longest thing Harry has ever said to him that doesn't feel like he's rehearsed it in his head dozens of times. Louis isn't sure why that makes him feel some kind of ease.

Even if it is just the other man telling him off for now, it gives him some kind of hope that eventually they can have a civilized conversation. Maybe something more akin to the interview that Louis so desperately needs for his research to be as good as he needs it to be. If he can get there, it will be enough.

 

It's pitch black outside when Harry takes an exit off the highway. Louis had been asleep, but he's lurched awake when he feels the car come to a stop at a stop sign. The towns that Harry stops in all seem to be small, tiny and unremarkable in any way except that they've been robbed by him. His own town has only two stop signs and a population of less than two thousand. He'd moved away from that tiny town the moment he had enough money to get himself on his feet, but when his dad had died, he'd had to go home to sort things out.

Maybe that makes it harder, knowing that there's no one left in his own town that would think to wonder why he's gone. But, he thinks, maybe that makes all of this easier. Makes it easier to disappear if Harry holds his end of the bargain up and doesn't kick him to the curb. But it works for him in other ways, too, knowing that there had been at least one face in that bank that recognized him.

"Are we stopping for the night?" His eyes are heavy even though he's been sleeping for far longer than he really anticipated to, but it's alright. He knows that he's likely not going to be able to sleep once they're checked into a motel room.

"Yeah. I'm falling asleep," Harry says. His voice isn't nearly as tense as it has been the last few times that Louis has tried to talk to him. He almost seems to be at ease, like he isn't afraid to speak to him. Louis figures it's the exhaustion, the fact that he's been driving without a single stop aside from gas for almost sixteen hours.

They turn a corner and stop in front of another tiny motel, dimly lit with flowers lining the front once again. He can't help but wonder if Harry knows where he's going or if he's really just winging all of this, but it seems like a question for a later time. Even he's not mean enough to take advantage of the man's exhaustion by prodding at him when he doesn't really have the capacity for a filter. It wouldn't feel right.

At least when he's rested Louis can pretend he has some kind of informed consent.

Harry parks the car behind the building like he always seems to do and grabs his duffle bag before the two of them make their way inside and up to the front desk. The woman sitting at the counter is reading a book and only looks up at them when the bell above the door chimes their entry, and the clock above her head says it's nearly midnight.

"Hello, we'd like a double room for the night, please," Harry says as they walk up to the counter. His voice still sounds tired, but he's charismatic in a way that Louis didn't think he could be. The only two ways that Louis has seen him have been completely opposite of charismatic, so it only serves to draw him in even further. There are so many faces that Harry doesn't show around him. As much as he gets it, it still confuses him to no end.

"Oh, sir, I'm sorry we only have one room left with one single bed," The woman says behind the counter, flipping through the pages of her book. "You're here for the conference right? Most of these people have booked their spots months in advance, I'm afraid." That sends alarm bells through Louis' mind, sends his thoughts spiraling in a way he doesn't like to let happen. He doesn't take Harry as that type of man, and he certainly doesn't take him as anything he should be afraid of, but the idea of sleeping next to him still doesn't leave him with the most at ease feeling.

"Yeah, I meant to book our room in advance but it seems to have slipped my mind. Oh, well. The single bed is just fine."

Louis wants to shoot himself.

"Fantastic. That will be twenty dollars for the night, sir."

"Twenty dollars?"

"Yes, sir. We did raise our prices just a bit since there is high demand for rooms with the conference." Louis can tell Harry is gritting his teeth, but he keeps a smile on his face.

"Right, yes, of course. Not a problem." Harry fishes two ten dollar bills from his wallet and hands them over to the woman behind the counter along with an ID that reads a name that certainly isn't his own. She scribbles his name and the number of his license down into her book and puts the money into the drawer. It's yet another thing that Louis can't help but be curious about. If Harry has been robbing banks, why is he still so hesitant to spend the money? What is stopping him from wanting to hand over as much cash as possible to get a better room, even?

They get the key to the room and make their way down the hall and up the stairs without a word. It's the room on the far end of the hall on the third floor, the woman had said. So up the stairs they go. Louis can't help but sneak a few glances in Harry's general direction, trying his best to gauge what the man could possibly be thinking.

He probably should have learned by now that there's no way he can get inside of Harry's head unless the man wants him there, but he can't help his own curiosity.

Harry locks the deadbolt on the door behind them as well as the chain lock, then closes the blinds immediately. Only after that does he throw his duffle bag down on the desk.

Louis takes his shoes off and lays down on the side of the bed closest to the door, leaving his clothes from the day on. At home, he'd normally sleep in just his boxers, but here, he knows he doesn't have that choice. It feels a bit gross to still be in the same clothes, but he's not sure when he's going to be able to get out of them, so he just doesn't say anything.

"We can stop somewhere for you to get whatever tomorrow," Harry says, almost like he knew what Louis was thinking.

"Cool. Thanks."

It's silent between the two of them again after that, but it's less uncomfortable. It feels significantly less dangerous.

Harry eventually makes his way over to the bed, too, after he went into the bathroom and changed into his sleep clothes. It's awkward, laying there and trying not to think about the fact that he's laying beside Harry at all. He can feel the bed move and dip with each breath that the other man takes. His own heart is pounding in his chest with anxiety as he closes his eyes. Maybe this is better, maybe it's easier this way, just because he'll be able to feel if Harry tries to leave. He's never been a light sleeper, but he hasn't really been sleeping at all at night since this started.

Sleeping during the day with the sound of the car running has been peaceful enough.

Harry snores. He also moves around a lot in his sleep, and they're just small things that really make him seem human. Louis has to look at him for a moment while he sleeps, has to try and remind himself that everything about Harry is just human and that's the entire reason he's here, studying him. There would be no reason for him to be here trying to figure him out if he wasn't just like everyone else.

The hours tick by and eventually he drifts off into a light sleep.

The next day, they're back at it again.

His nerves are on high alert as he sits on the edge of the motel bed. The smell of cleaner in the room feels stronger, somehow, than it had the night previous when the two of them had settled down for bed. He's still exhausted, still unsure and a little afraid that Harry might just run off in the middle of the night and leave him entirely alone in a city he doesn't know.

Of course, that wouldn't be the smartest thing for the other man to do, just because he knows his face, his name, his car. He knows enough that he can almost promise that he'd help any cop catch him as soon as possible. But that would destroy his research. Null the effort that he's already put into it, and that wouldn't exactly be worth it. At least not to him. He needs Harry out here like this, in his natural criminal habitat. As long as he's not really hurting anyone else, there's no reason for him to need to stop this right away. At least not before he has his research compiled.

 

"I'll get it," He says softly, stopping Harry from grabbing the check. The man just looks at him for a moment, eyes him suspiciously before Louis grabs it and looks at the cost. He leaves a five dollar bill on the table and the two of them walk out without a word.

Louis has decided he's going to do his best to get on Harry's good side. If that exists, anyway. If there's a way to get him to open up and give him the information he needs, then he'll be happy. Or maybe it's just something out of self preservation. He has a bad feeling that he'll lose his mind a little more with each passing day that goes on stuck in a car with someone who refuses to hold out a conversation with him. He needs something, whether it's information for his research or just friendly conversation.

That's something that's a little hard to admit, just because he likes to pretend that he can throw all of his focus right into his work, but he's still human. That's another thing he has to remind himself of every once in a while. He's human, he has needs, and there are some things that he can't manage on his own.

They walk back down the sidewalk towards the motel just as the sun peeks it's head over the horizon. "Are you doing it today?" He asks, unable to stop himself when they're completely alone, no one else around the two of them. Harry just sighs and nods his head.

It seems like his façade of angry man is falling away faster than Louis thought it would have. Instead, he still just looks tired.

"Bank opens at eight. I go in at nine."

"Great." Louis looks down and checks his watch. It's just a few minutes past six and that makes the anxiety slowly start to crawl up the back of his throat. It's not great. It's far from great. He knows that that means he's going to get shoved into a trunk and forced to sit there and just wait for as long as Harry takes, and that certainly doesn't sit well with him. But he just tries to smile through the anxiety of all of that.

"How long is this going to take?" His voice is shaking just a bit as the two of them stand there and he eyeballs the little space. Harry is tucking a blanket inside so the carpet doesn't rub painfully against his skin, but nothing can really make the idea of this pleasant at all.

"It's three blocks down, then I'll take about seven minutes inside, then fifteen or twenty to get far enough away that I can let you out," Harry says, and he sounds like this isn't bothering him in the slightest, but Louis' heart is hammering. His mouth feels dry and he wishes in that moment that he would have just let Harry run away, that he wouldn't have stuck his nose where it didn't belong. "In you go, then."

"Right." He climbs inside and tries to calm the racing of his heart. Less than half an hour. Less than thirty minutes. That's nothing. He can handle this. Those thoughts get a little less strong when he's actually inside and he can feel the walls on every side of him, rubbing against his skin and making him feel like his oxygen supply is slowly running out.

The trunk is smaller than Louis worried it would have been.

He has to curl up around himself to be able to fit comfortably inside of it, and even then, comfortable isn't the word of choice that he thinks fits this situation. He makes eye contact with Harry one final time before the door is closed and the darkness wraps all around him. In that moment, his thoughts slowly start to go a little crazy, start to get a little out of his control.

He can't help but wonder if Harry had this planned, if he's going to ditch him here where he's stuck and unable to get out. He can't help but think about how long it might take for anyone to notice that there's a car there, that there's something not right. Would it take hours? Days? How long would it take for him to think it's alright to yell for help?

Harry told him to be silent so he doesn't draw any attention to the car, but in the darkness he can't make out the numbers on the face of his watch so he can't tell how long he's been locked inside of the tiny space.

He feels the car lurch forward and he can tell they're moving. So at least that gets rid of the idea that Harry might just abandon him. At least for now. But all that does it spark up another horrifying idea that he hadn't really thought of. What if Harry just wants to finish his journey and leave him in here the entire time? Would he really do something that cruel? His heart starts racing all over again and he squeezes his eyes shut tightly, counting backwards from 100 in his head as he does his best to calm down. To even out his breathing and try to keep the panic at bay.

The car comes to another stop, only when he reaches fifty six in his backwards count, and then it shuts off.

He doesn't hear anything on the outside. No voices, no cars, no kids laughing. Forty four seconds wouldn't have been enough time for Harry to have taken him somewhere secluded to abandon him, so that anxiety dwindles. It's enough to take him off of the edge, at least temporarily. Then, he just restarts his counting.

Backwards from one hundred the first time, then backwards from one hundred by fours, by sixes, by twos. It keeps his mind occupied enough that he doesn't have any room in his head to think about what could very possibly be his impending doom.

But still, time feels like it's ticking on slower than it ever has in his life.

Only when he feels the car lurch back into motion, vibrating with the feeling of the engine still moving, does he feel relief.

He never thought he would be relived at the idea of a serial robber being back in his vicinity, but it washes over him and relieves more of his panic than he would entirely like to admit. It feels nice, to be back in motion.

Even if he knows that now he's going to be in the trunk for even longer, stuck in the tiny enclosed space for at least another fifteen minutes. It makes nausea roll through his stomach, makes his head spin all over again as he tries to restart his counting. The motion throws him off, though, makes it hard to think about what comes after each number when there are bumps in the road and turns that make his body roll against a wall.

This time, time feels like it's going faster, though.

It's not long before they come to a stop all over again and the door to the trunk is opening, making his eyes burn from the sudden flood of light. He climbs out faster than he should, with numb legs barely holding him up.

One of Harry's arms wraps around his own as he nearly falls, steadying him for a moment. The feeling that he might throw up is gone as he breathes in the fresh air and all he can do is walk over to the passenger side of the car and sit himself down. He's shaking - trembling, really - as he sits down and pulls the seatbelt over his chest. Harry closes the trunk door with a loud thud before he walks around the car and gets in, only to start driving again.

"You alright?" Harry asks, but Louis is still shaking.

"Fine. Yeah." His words are sloppy, barely strung together, and he feels like he can barely get a sentence out, but it works well enough. Harry starts driving down the road once again, and Louis rolls the window down to get a little fresh air.

"So, since you're a psychologist, what makes you so afraid of small spaces?" It's a weird question, and it takes Louis off guard. It doesn't surprise him exactly because of what the question is, but more just because Harry is asking him a question at all. He'd had a feeling that this would all be entirely one sided, that all of this would be him asking questions to Harry and getting shitty one word answers in response.

it takes him right back to the day previous when he'd said that this would be a lot easier if their communication were mutual. But all he can do is look at Harry for a long moment as he thinks of how he's supposed to answer this. It's a loaded question, asking him about his own life. It's not a beautiful story or anything that makes him want to answer it. It's nothing he particularly ever wants to talk about and it's certainly not something he really wants to tell someone he's just met.

But perhaps this is what Harry is feeling. Maybe this question being thrown in his own face that he doesn't' want to answer is a prime example of what he's doing to the other man. Asking invasive questions that he likely doesn't want to answer. Except the difference is that Harry can only be asking because he's curious. He wouldn't have any reason to ask otherwise.

"If I tell you my dirty little secrets will you tell me yours?" Harry looks at him for a moment, like he's studying him right back, and Louis isn't sure why that makes him feel oddly good. It makes it feel like this isn't so much of a one way thing, like Harry can get something out of all of this, too.

"I suppose that's fair."

"Well, I guess Freud was a little right when it comes to my life. My uh, my dad, used to like to put me in small spaces and..." He trails off, trying not to think about it. "My father complex is a little less about my dad and a little more just trying not to dwell on the shit he did to me, though." Harry spends far too long looking at him for someone who's supposed to be driving, and that makes him uncomfortable. There isn't another car on the road and Harry doesn't so much as veer an inch out of place, but Louis' heart still hammers. He can't tell if he's uncomfortable just because Harry is looking at him or just because of the driving or maybe a mixture of both.

"He just... locked you in small spaces? And left you there?" He actually sounds upset but this, angered in a way that Louis didn't think he would be. It's a good feeling, to have someone else be angry about something he's spent most of his own life being angry about.

"Yeah. Then I realized I didn't like small spaces even when I wound up there on my own, and that's a pretty big part of what got me interested in psychology."

"That's pretty fucked up."

"Yeah, he was kind of a dick," He says and pauses, trying to think of the question he wants to ask. He hopes that all of this is the two of them being on the way to forming a better relationship, or maybe on the way to being comfortable talking to one another. It's a stretch, a reach and he even knows it, but that small part of him that's always been at least a little optimistic when it comes to things like this is hopeful. "What's your family like?"

It clearly takes Harry off guard, but he doesn't seem to falter on it. "Lovely. I miss them more than I can really explain." It's quiet between the two of them for a moment, then, before Harry continues. "My parents are both lovely. Mom is still around. She's a nurse. Dad died a few years back. He's always been nice, but he was really different after he got back from the war, so sometimes I think it's best that he left. Didn't have too much time to leave the memories of the new him around." Louis just smiles. It's enough insight into the man's life that he's pleased. At least for now.

 

The anxiety doesn’t take too long to wear off after that. 

There’s something oddly calming about having had just one conversation with Harry. It settles something inside of him that he hadn’t really thought would be settled. He can’t help but wonder if Harry feels the same, if he wants to talk just as much as Louis does. It’s awkward, sitting beside someone without speaking. It isn’t something he’s done before, at least not on such a long term scale. 

He’d thought that questions he would want to ask the other man would come much easier and flow smoother between the two of them, but instead he just seems to keep hitting the same wall over and over. Not knowing what to ask, not knowing when to ask it, not knowing how to phrase it. It’s all a bit much even for him and he doesn’t really know how to handle all of this. 

  
  
  
  


It’s dark outside, with the blinds over the windows drawn shut. There’s a break between the cloth, and in the reflection he can see Harry, his reflection distorted slightly by the glass, but being able to see him at all is comforting. He can hear the whipping of the wind breaking the silence in the room,  slowly lulling him to sleep. His eyelids are heavy, mostly because he hasn’t slept well in the days before, but it’s calming. He feels comfortable for what feels like the first time in the last several days, and all he can do is hope that tonight will be the first night he can rest easy . 

He’s pretty sure Harry assumes he’s sleeping, with the way he’s sniffling, clearly trying to be quiet as he keeps himself from crying, but the noise is loud in the otherwise silent room. Louis keeps watching the other man, the way he moves, the way he behaves, it’s all more interesting than Louis ever thought a person could be. It’s these soft moments when he thinks the other man thinks he’s alone, thinks he can be himself without judgement, that Louis gets to know the most about him.

He’s counting the seconds between breathing to keep up the illusion of sleep, even if he knows it won’t be long before he actually falls out. A deep breath in, hold for a moment, then an exhale, softly. Harry’s on the second bed in the motel room, back against the headboard still, knees drawn to his chest, and his head resting against them. 

Louis has no idea what’s going on, but he can’t help but be intrigued. 

He’d never thought he would be in this situation, but finding himself in it isn’t as… he isn’t sure why it’s differing so greatly between what he’d imagined would happen in a situation like this and what’s happening now. There are so many questions he wants to ask, but he doesn’t know if he wants to deal with the answers. When he’d been following Harry, speeding down the highway after him, he’d thought it would be easy. A part of his mind had been certain he could keep up a clinical facade, force himself to ask the questions and document the answers without thinking about them. But now, confronted with it, he realizes he can’t completely separate himself from his own emotions. 

The bed on the other side of the room shuffles just a bit, and he hears the phone come off thereciever. The buttons all make a beeping noise as he dials them, and Louis listens to the man dial ten digits, then there’s silence. 

It takes a few moments before he hears his voice. 

“Hi, is she still up?” He asks first, and Louis listens. Harry’s voice is quiet, like he’s trying not to wake Louis up, but even beyond that there’s a softness to it. “Yeah, please.” Another pause. “Hi, sweetheart.” Pause, “I know. I’m sorry. I just wanted to call and say hello.” Only hearing Harry’s end of the conversation is a little weird, but it almost… helps. It helps him get a little bit of a grip on who Harry is, on what he wants from life and what he’s feeling, since he refuses to tell Louis anything at all. Harry hums softly in agreement into the line, and Louis can’t help but keep listening. Maybe it feels a little wrong to eavesdrop in such a way, but the curious part of him wins over that. “Okay. Back to bed for you then, love. I love you very, very much and I’m trying to get home as fast as I can, okay?” He can hear Harry swallow hard from across the room. “I love you too. So, so much. Good night sweetheart.” 

The phone gets put down on the receiver, then, and it’s quiet again.  There’s been more silence in the time since he’s joined Harry than he thinks he’s ever experienced between two people, and it’s almost suffocating. Always quiet. So quiet that he thinks it makes sense that the man’s managed to drive himself a little mad. 

Their gazes meet in the reflection of the window, then, and Louis’ stomach lurches. He feels exposed, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have, and it sends a wave of anxiety through him. 

Harry doesn’t say anything, though. Instead, he just flicks the lamp sitting on the bedside table off and Louis can’t see him anymore. He falls asleep shortly after. 


	2. Two.

HARRY

 

For nothing more than a lack of better words, Louis makes Harry nervous. 

He hates being in such close proximity to someone else when he knows he’s doing something wrong, and it doesn’t help that he feels like he can barely breathe with him around. It’s already bad enough, doing what he’s doing, but doing it in front of someone who’s trying to write about him, trying to  _ study him,  _ makes it even worse. 

He figures it's some kind of karma for doing what he did to the other man in the bank. Of course he still feels bad about doing it at all, but it very well might have been the only thing that got him out of that building as he planned rather than with a bullet in him or dead. It's not that he wants to cause damage to anyone or anything throughout all of this - he doesn't - it's just that he has a goal and there's very little, if anything, that he's willing to let stop him.

So, being distracted by the little problem in the bed beside him isn't an option.

With the phone now on the receiver, he takes a moment to wonder exactly how much Louis picked up from that. He'd thought the other man was asleep until their gazes met, so yet another fresh swirl of anxiety is making it's way through his gut. He knows Louis wants to know why he's doing this, wants to know what's going through his head that's making him truly willing to give up everything in his own life for something like money. But he's just not ready to talk about it, not ready to tell anyone.

It had been hard enough telling the one person that does know, and even that had been purely out of necessity rather than desire. He'd needed someone to send the money to and the only option was to tell someone who he had a feeling would be willing to help him.

But now he's not ready to tell the story again and he's certainly not willing to tell the story to a complete outsider who doesn't know any of the details. At least with Zayn, he'd known most of it. Had been around when Bella first got sick, had been around to deal with the aftermath of how much of wreck he'd been when he heard the dreaded word that no parent ever wants to hear. He'd been around when the doctors told him that if he couldn't pay then they wouldn't treat her, and he'd been around when Harry had done everything in his power to gather money without doing something this drastic.

He'd been there, seen the destruction all of it caused. He didn't need to be told all of the pain to understand what he was going through. Louis, on the other hand, he'd have to hear the whole story. Without being there to see everything that has hurt as horribly as it has, Harry doesn't expect him to understand.

He breathes out a sigh of relief when it seems like Louis has actually fallen asleep rather than is just pretending to be asleep before he leans back against the headboard. This is all just too much for him and he really doesn't know where he's supposed to go from here. He has no idea what he's going to do with Louis throwing such a massive curveball in his plan.

He has everything planned out. Where he's going, what time he should get there, what route to take to get there, how many places he needs to hit. It's all perfectly planned out in the exact way he needs it to be to get home in time for it to seem like nothing is really wrong. But he doesn't even know how long Louis is going to stick around, so he has no clue how he's supposed to plan for that.

The thoughts swirl around in his head constantly as he tries to think of how he's going to handle this.

He could just leave.

He could leave Louis here while he's sleeping and move on, but he has a bad feeling that the other man would keep true on his promise and tell the cops exactly who he is. Maybe they wouldn't catch him right away, not with how much he's moving and how far he's going, but they'd catch him when he went home to try and forget all of this ever happened.

That wouldn't be ideal.

The only other option he can think of would be to kill Louis, and he doesn't have that in him. He's not a killer. He's doing all of this to save a life, and he has no plans to take one in the process. That would only leave him with a terribly guilty conscience and enough karma that could destroy everything he's working for.

All he wants is to finish this, to go home and live the normal life he wants for his family, hopefully without the looming threat of his daughter being ill with something that can very well kill her at any moment.

The last option, of course, even if it's not something that's really going to fix his problem, is just to accept that Louis is here. Accept that he isn't going to leave until he's done whatever it is that he feels he needs to do, too.

Maybe they're more different than he thought they were. They're both just working towards a goal that they're willing to do anything for. Louis risked his life unknowing is Harry would kill him or not, and Harry is here risking his life with the chance of being thrown in prison for the rest of his life. Just that thought makes his stomach ache, but it makes it a little easier to think that he might be able to accept the other man into his life and let him tag along.

Maybe it won't be the easiest thing he's ever done, and it definitely won't be something that he wants to do, but at least he can say he's willing to do it at all. 

 

The two of them are sitting in a café the following day, a metal pot of coffee for them to pour for themselves sitting between them. They hadn't really talked much since the two of them had woken up, but Harry didn't mind it like that. In fact, he actually found himself enjoying the silence more than anything. If he tried hard enough, he could almost convince himself he was alone yet again for just a few minutes.

Even the slightest reprieve of everything going on around him makes it all feel a little bit easier to handle.

A waitress comes over and asks for their orders before too long. "A pancake, please, with strawberries on top," Louis says, smiling and handing her his menu.

"Two eggs, medium, with two pieces of toast please," Harry says next, and then they're alone again. But just that small interaction that hadn't even been between the two of them was enough to remind Harry he's not alone. That no only is he doing something horrible, but he also has to do it with an audience. It's not something that makes him feel the best.

It stays quiet between them a while longer, both of them just sipping at their coffees between Harry's zoned out gazes out the window. He can't help but wonder if anyone knows of what's going on, if anyone has any idea of what he's doing, of the fact that it's him doing it at all. He has a feeling there aren't any viable leads just because he's still safely sitting here and there haven't been any repercussions yet, but he can't help but worry. Every part of him knows that he needs to be successful in this. In the end, he'd turn himself in if he had to be able to save his daughter. But to be able to do that, he knows he has to get away with it.

It doesn't take long for their food to come out, the waitress bringing it over to the table and setting it down. She asks another question but Harry just lets Louis answer, doesn't have the energy inside of him to try and deal with the pleasantries.

"So," Louis starts and a surge of anxiety swells up in Harry's chest, "Who were you talking to on the phone last night?" It's the question that Harry knew was coming, but it doesn't make him any more prepared to answer it than he thought he would have been. Really, just hearing the question makes him choke up, makes him want to flee. Louis doesn't even seem fazed by the question, but Harry can't blame him for that. Can't blame him for doing something that he doesn't' even know is rude.

"My mom," He lies. He knows Louis can tell he's lying -- or he knows that Louis is smart enough to call him out on the obvious lie. But he still says it, just out of some kind of hope that maybe the other man doesn't really care enough to dig deeper, out of the hope that maybe he'll just look past it and ask a question about something else.

"You talk to your mom like a child?" Louis asks, taking a bit of his pancake with an eyebrow quirked. He's in an awfully bold mood - the kind of mood Harry had a feeling he would dread - with the way he asks questions he doesn't really have the right to ask.

Or, maybe he does.

Considering Harry doesn't really have a say in any of this or any of what Louis is going to do around him. He's not sure where their boundary lines are drawn, if there even are any. That's what makes him the most nervous with all of this. He plops one of his eggs onto his toast and cuts it up with his knife and takes a bite, trying to focus on anything except that moment. Trying to focus on the good things, on things that make him happy, on things that aren't causing him crippling anxiety.

"Sometimes." It takes him longer than it should to answer, and that's likely clear enough evidence that he doesn't want to answer any of this. That this is one of the kinds of topics that he isn't interested in. But, in their short time together, Harry has learned that there's nothing that can really throw Louis off course when he's really interested in something. If he wants an answer, if he wants to do something at all, he's going to get it and there's no one that can stop him.

"Who were you actually talking to?"

"Christ, you're pushy."

"If you tell me I might stop pushing."

"You might," He parrots, staring Louis in the face with an unamused expression. The other man just grins, filling up his cup of coffee the rest of the way after he'd drank half of it. He tops Harry's off, too, then just nods his response. "My daughter," Harry finally says with a huff.

It's silent between the two of them for a moment as Louis stares him down. The expression on his face isn't familiar to Harry and he doesn't know how to feel about it, doesn't know how he's meant to read it. Even if he feels that way with most of what Louis does around him, this time it feels different. It almost feels more critical, more like he's being studied, and that's a feeling he hates more than anything else.

"You're out here, doing all of this, when you have a child at home?" Louis asks, his voice truly critical, and Harry freezes. It takes him a few seconds to fully absorb the words for what they are, takes him way longer than it should to truly understand exactly what Louis is saying, but the moment he does, he's getting up.

He fishes a dollar bill out of his pocket and tosses it down onto the table before he's walking out, meal left unfinished with absolutely no desire to spend another moment with Louis. He wants to leave. Wants to get into his car and ditch the other man and his questions, his judgement. But he knows that that will only lead to him getting caught, and that's the one thing he can't afford in this whole situation.

He's shaking with the anger of it all by the time he gets outside. He feels warm all over his body with the rage of it, unsure how he's supposed to handle it. He'd never thought he would get a question like that -- or not even a question, a judgmental phrase without any knowledge behind it.

He gets into his car and sits behind the wheel before he rests his head against the headrest behind him and takes a deep breath. He feels almost numb with the feeling as Louis' words keep bouncing around his head.

He is out here doing all this when he has a daughter at home.

He's out here doing all of this for his daughter at home, to give her a chance to have a life of her own. To give her the ability to live past ten years old.

There's not a single other person in the world he could see himself doing this for, but for Bella, he's willing to do anything. He'd die for her if it meant she wouldn't have to. It's a thought that doesn't even take consideration. He just knows that he would.

So that's why he's here. That's why he's not at home with her, and he has no way of explaining that to someone like Louis who doesn't have kids. Who doesn't know what it's like to put someone else's life entirely in your hands and then to feel so helpless when they're dying right in front of you with no way to stop it.

Louis comes out before long.

"That was uncalled for," He says, crossing his arms over his chest. The rage spikes up inside of Harry all over again, this time it's worse. Everything he wants to ay runs in a loop at one hundred times speed through his head, but before he can narrow down exactly what he wants to say, he explodes.

"You don't know shit about what's going on in my life, alright? You don't know me. You don't know anything about me, and I have no reason to tell you anything other than your shitty threat to ruin my life if I don't do what you want me to do. So back the fuck off. Do whatever it is that you think you need to do and do it quickly so I can get you out of my life for good," He seethes when Louis comes out to the car. The man is just staring at him, but it doesn't take too long before he's climbing back into the car on the passenger's side. He's quiet for a moment, straps his seatbelt on across his chest before he turns to face Harry.

"It wasn't my intention to offend you, I'm sorry. It was just a knee jerk reaction to the idea of it, I guess. But I can see that the subject is a soft spot so I won't ask you about it anymore."

"It's a little late for being nice to me. You're not going to get on my good side now unless you decide to get out of my car and let me go." The whole thing would sound weird to someone who doesn't understand the exact predicament Harry has gotten into. He's being held hostage by someone who is entirely willing to let him leave at any moment. He could leave, but then it would be over for him. Perhaps not in the exact moment he left, but when he returned home, everything would be over. He wouldn't even have a home to return to.

Louis doesn't respond this time, just shakes his head with a roll of his eyes and turns away from him. Harry starts driving at that, almost glad for the tension between them. He's been more uncomfortable since Louis joined him than he's ever been in his life, and it almost feels like it's Louis' turn to feel some sort of discomfort. To feel the tension between them in the way that he's felt since their first interaction.

Maybe it's rude. Maybe that doesn't make him the best person he could be, but it feels like the right thing to do. So as he drives down the highway, the tension still thick between them, he still doesn't say anything. Doesn't bother trying to mend the problem. He knows it's fully on him at this point with Louis likely just waiting for him to forgive him, and he almost wants to, if it will get him out of his car with more questions, but the bigger part of him doesn't want to.

Louis reaches over to the radio and plays the CD that's been sitting inside of it since the first day without asking. He accepts that as their weird form of a truce.

"I'm still sorry, you know," Louis says several hours later after he's woken up from a nap. Harry is still driving. So much driving. "I really didn't mean to upset you. I didn't realize you would have that strong of a reaction to it."

"Well, I did, so," Harry says, still a little upset about the entire thing. "But I forgive you, I suppose. As long as you stop asking about anything related to that."

"Alright, I suppose that's fair for now." Harry has a feeling that he'll be asked about it again before long. Likely within a week, especially if Louis gets any kind of indication that all of this really is for his daughter. He's just not ready for the conversation, and even if he doubts he ever really will be fully ready, he needs a little more time to prepare. A little more time to figure out exactly how to articulate his thoughts.

Louis makes it hard enough to try and have a clear head, but with all of the stress that he's already dealing with on top of having to handle Louis, too, he doesn't know how he's supposed to manage it all. He wishes that there could be a way for the two of them to get along, but Harry can’t help but get defensive with the idea of being studied without his permission. He has a feeling anyone would get like that and that he’s not the only one who would act like this in this situation. He isn’t sure if that makes him feel any better or not, but it doesn’t make him feel any worse, at least, so that’s all he cares about. 

  
  


Harry stops at another, different place for dinner. 

He’s gotten used to the constant and ever changing way of life, has gotten used to not being in the same place for more than a day at a time. He thinks it’s likely not the best way of life for him to get used to, but he doesn’t mind it. It keeps everything a little more interesting than he thought things could be when he’s away from the only things in his life that really matter, and if nothing else it makes it easier to forget where he is and what he’s doing. 

“I’m sorry,” Louis says again in the middle of their meal. “I know I crossed a line earlier, asking you about things I don’t know about and judging you when I don’t have even close to all of the information. We’re going to have to be two feet from each other for who knows how long so I feel like this tension isn’t going to make either of us have a good time.”

“Were we having a good time before?” Harry asks, quirking an eyebrow before he takes another bite of his meatloaf. 

“I mean -- no. But we could, maybe. We could at least be civil, right?” Harry knows he’s being a brat. He knows that he’s being completely difficult on purpose and for truly no reason at this point, but he just isn’t sure he wants to be civil to the other man. He didn’t ask for this. He didn’t ask for Louis to tag along with him and be this heavy burden on his shoulders on top of everything else. Even if, logically, he knows that the burden would be at least slightly relieved if the tension between the two of them wasn’t so high, he doesn't want to play nice. 

“You do know I don’t want you here?” 

“Yes, I’m fully aware.”

“Then why would I want to be nice?” 

“Because the tension between the two of us is stressing you out. You aren’t sleeping and when you do sleep it’s restless. I imagine that’s just because you’re stressing yourself out with all of this.” Harry hates that he’s right, but he decides not to say anything else. Maybe he should start being nice. Maybe keeping such a cold and unworried facade up with all of this has been making it so much harder. 

 

Harry’s eyes are drooping. He doesn’t even really feel tired, but it’s the repetitive motions and feelings of driving that make him feel exhausted. Even the music he’s started to play doesn’t make him feel any better. 

“We really shouldn’t just keep driving. You’re gonna drive yourself mad,” Louis says as they start to drive through a bigger city. Seattle. One of the places he’s always wanted to go, always imagined himself living in.  

“I can take care of myself. I don’t need you to look after me.”

“I know you don’t, but isn’t your body tired of just sitting in that same position for this long?” He’s right. Every part of his body has been aching for too long about how long he’s been sitting here in this ar. Even when he’d first been sitting in the same position, day after day, he’d hated it. He’s been sued to having regular physical activity for his entire life, so to suddenly go without it and to suddenly start just sitting still all day every day, it’s taken a toll on him. So, he decides to agree. Maybe it’s stupid, maybe the only thing that can really come out of it is getting caught, but he figures as long as he’s careful, as long as he tries his best not to do the stupid things, that it will be fine. 

“And what is it that you suggest we do instead, then?”

“I don’t know. We could find a bar. I’ll buy your drinks?” 

“A bar,” He repeats, looking over to Louis with an eyebrow cocked. It sounds like the stupidest thing they could do. It sounds like a sure way to get caught. 

“Yeah. Like, a big city one. Lots of new faces, lots of people who don't care we’re there.” 

He sighs, then takes an exit into the city.

 

The music is loud in the bar, pounding through the speakers in a way that Harry hasn't been surrounded by in a long time. He hasn't been in a club since he was in university, and even then, it hadn't been for long. He'd always just gone with his friends for a song or two or a drink or two and then they'd be off. The scene had never been something he was entirely interested in, and this time it's no different. He just wants to get a few drinks in him for nothing except maybe the hope that it will help him start having a little bit more fun.

But being with Louis -- he’s anxious. He can’t help the anxiety that gnaws at his stomach that people will notice them, think they’re together, and kick them out. He doesn’t want that kind of attention brought to him. He wants nothing more than to just be able to blend in and not have to worry about anything. He wants to go home at the end of this entire mess and just pretend that none of it happened, but he can’t do that if there are people in the world who remember him, too. 

_ What are we even doing here?  _ He wants to ask. He wants to figure out how they’re going to get out of this without something bad happening, but he doesn’t know how. Everything about all of this doesn't’ make any sense to him and he doesn’t know how to bring any of that up to anyone. 

Louis leads the two of them over to the bar and takes a seat and Harry just sits beside him, unsure what else he’s supposed to do. 

“I’m still gonna cover your drinks,” Louis says, and Harry just looks at him a little skeptical over again. He wants to believe that Louis really is as kind as he’s trying to let off, but he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to let that happen. 

“Alright. Just a vodka cran then.” Louis doesn’t hesitate and just orders his drink for him and something for himself that Harry doesn’t hear. It’s easy to get a little lost in his thoughts with everything that’s going on around them. 

Louis talks with a few of the people at the bar with them and Harry tries to chime in with whatever he thinks is important to say every once in a while, but for the most part, he can’t focus. Focusing on the car and on the road was hard, but this almost feels harder. 

He doesn't’ really feel like himself. He doesn’t feel like he’s the same person who left his house two months ago with a good heart and a good mind. Everything feels a little less good in the world now and it feels like things just can’t go right for him no matter how much he needs them to. Being here just makes that feel even more real. He could have been home already had Louis not come into all of this and ruined things. Or if not all the way home then he could have been closer, at least. Or maybe not. It’s more than likely that he’s just in a sour mood and doesn’t want to think about anything, so he tries to shake it off. 

 

As the night goes on, no one notices either of them that Harry wouldn’t have wanted. 

Or, if they do, no one says anything. It’s an odd feeling and it’s not something that Harry has ever seen before. He’s used to seeing people get nearly dragged out of clubs and public places with so much as the assumption of being gay. It’s just something no one talks about. Don’t ask and don’t tell. 

Louis has bought all of his drinks, and he hasn’t even tried to hide it. He’s made it obvious both what he’s doing and who he’s doing it for, and not a single person has so much as bat an eye at them. 

“How is no one minding this?” He finally asks, just motioning between the two of them with a quirked eyebrow. 

“Seattle is just a good place,” Louis says with a shrug. It leaves Harry a little more confused than he was before, even, but he doesn’t mind. At least he knows that Louis thought about it enough, too, to know where they should have stopped that they could be together without anyone thinking it’s wrong. 

They fall into a silence after that -- a comfortable air between them settling despite not talking. It’s not completely silent, with the way the music pounds, but when it’s just them, their world view minimized, it’s quiet. For too long it had felt like there was a constant kind of static between them, a reminder that something was wrong. 

As much as Harry knows that there had been something deeply wrong just from their established dyamic, a part of him is glad that it’s resolving itself, that things are getting better. 

  
  


He finishes off his last drink -- a sex on the beach, just because Louis is paying -- and the bartender collects his glass and takes it away.

He has three drinks in him and his eyes are starting to feel heavy. It's getting late and he wants nothing more than to just be able to go back to a hotel room and ty and get a half decent night's rest, but Louis still seems to be having a fairly decent time. He's chatting to the bartender and to a few different people sitting all around them.

He has this air around him that makes it easy to get drawn into the conversation. Makes it easy to want to listen. The way he holds himself is so commanding, like he knows that what he's saying is interesting and should be listened to. He'd talking about his work and the last study that he'd done on memory and perception. It has a few people genuinely listening in, and it seems that his name is well known enough that people all the way across the country and nearly star struck to be able to speak to him.

Harry hadn't recognized his name the first time he'd heard it, but he also didn't do any research in psychology. It isn't so much that he doesn't care for the topic, but more that he's never thought to look in to it. He can tell that Louis has truly dedicated his entire life to it and that he's interested. It's not something he's going to dwell on, but a part of him is happy for the other man that he's gotten the chance to do something like that.

It's not much time after that before Louis is asking him if he's ready to go and he's agreeing without a fight. He still feels at least a little tipsy, but he doesn't mind. It's an oddly pleasant feeling and it's been too long since he's been able to treat himself. He's spent too long worrying about money and having to save his daughter that he hasn't had any time to really do anything like this just for fun. But since Louis had paid for it, he doesn't feel any kind of guilt about it, doesn't let himself even think about the money that it must have costed. He doesn't even think about the distance that he could have covered in the time that this has taken. Instead, he just relaxes.

 

They walk across the street to the nearest hotel and Harry stays back to look at a plant they have in the lobby as Louis walks up the counter. He doesn’t really listen to anything that the other man is saying or that the woman across the counter is saying to Louis until he hears a familiar phrase. 

“I’m so sorry sir but we only have rooms with one bed in them left for this evening,” The woman at the front desk said. They’re words that Harry is familiar with, but this time it doesn’t create the same feeling of anger that he thought he should have felt.

He's standing a few feet back from where Louis is, not in the mood to deal with people for the moment. Normally, he's the type of person that loves to interact with others and be around others, but for the time being, he wants nothing to do with it. Louis had said he was going to pay for the room anyway, even after he paid for their drinks, so Harry doesn't feel bad about letting him stand up there by himself. Rather, he's happy to have the bit of reprieve from it all.

“Ah, suppose that works. We’ll just flip a coin on who has to sleep on the floor.” That catches Harry’s attention, mostly because he has absolutely no intention to sleep on the floor and he’s sure the other man knows that, but he has a feeling it’s just a distraction to keep the woman’s opinions of them at bay. The last thing either of them would need right now would be accusations of being gay. 

It doesn’t take long after that before Louis gets their room key and Harry is following him down the hallway and to the elevator at the end of the hall. They went all the way up to the highest floor where their room was ,then down another hallway before they were actually tucked away into the room for the night. 

“Hey, Louis?” Harry asks, still slightly tipsy enough that he thinks he can get away with at least a little snark.

“Yeah?”

“I’m not sleeping on the floor. “

“Well, we’re both fully grown adults I’m sure we can handle sharing a bed. It’s not that big of a deal.” 

“Yeah, you’re right.” 

 

About an hour later, Harry strips his clothes off as he gets ready for bed, getting down to just his boxers and a tank top. He finds two five dollar bills in his jean pocket and sits down on the bed before he grabs his wallet and opens it to put the bills back in there where they belong. 

He freezes, though, to look at the picture of Bella that sits right in the center of it. 

"Is that your daughter?" Louis asks, and when Harry looks over and meets his gaze he can see that there isn't any malicious intent behind the words. He just looks genuinely curious. Harry thinks he should be defensive about it -- thinks he should slam the leather shut and try and block out this entire part of his life as far away from Louis as he can get it, but that's not his first instinct. He doesn't understand the change, doesn't understand why just a few days ago he was fully ready to kick Louis to the curb in the middle of nowhere as long as it got him away from him, but now he doesn't mind not only laying in bed beside him but also letting him know about the most intimate pieces of his life.

His daughter is a part of his life that he doesn't want to share with many people, that he doesn't know how to share with many people. It's hard to talk about her and harder to handle his own emotions when he starts talking about her, and more often than not it's just embarrassing to think about how emotional he can get when he talks about it.

"Yeah. Her name is Bella," He says anyway, somehow bypassing that part of him that's worried about getting choked up over talking about her. Louis doesn't have his pen and paper out, doesn't have anything with him that makes Harry feel like he's an experiment being observed, so maybe that's why it's a little easier. Or maybe he just doesn't know what he's talking about and just wants to dump all of his feelings on someone who's willing to ask.

The picture of Bella is a few years old, when she was three and before she got sick. It's a picture of the two of them, her perched high up on Harry's shoulders as she's squealing with happiness. He can still remember that day so clearly, can still hear her laughter, can still smell the funnel cakes at the fair he'd taken her to. It didn't seem fair to him that someone so soft and so innocent could be attacked so cruelly by a world she hasn't even gotten to experience yet.

"Do you miss her?"

"Terribly." It doesn't even take a second for Harry to come up with his answer. He doesn't need to think about it. He misses her more than he's ever missed anything or anyone and he's barely been apart from her for a few months. Every day that he isn't with her and seeing every moment that he has with her feels like an unfair eternity. But he knows that he's doing what he has to do and that if he doesn't do this then all of the moments he would get with her otherwise would be numbered.

"You don't have to tell me of course but -- why are you here, then? You have a family right? What has caused all of this?"

It's a fair question. It really is a question that Harry should have been ready for, but he feels the beginnings of tears spring up in his eyes as he thinks about it. Everything about the entire situation laces him with guilt in a way he's never experienced and he can't help but get choked up when he thinks about it.

"When she was four, she started having a lot of really bad stomach aches. I didn't really know what was causing them -- didn't know what to do about them, but before long I ended up taking her to the emergency room because she was in more pain than she was having good days and I didn't understand it." Louis is looking at him so intently with big eyes that seem to understand where he's going with this, but now that Harry has started his story it doesn't feel like he could stop even if he wanted to. it feels like it's all just flooding out of him in a way he hasn't felt since he first told Zayn about all of it.

"At first they told me it was a benign tumor that was just causing her pain and that there wasn't anything wrong with it, to bring her back in in six months to check up on her again if it was still causing her pain." He swallowed hard and turned to look out the window. It feels like the whole city of seattle is visible all around them from the top floor of their room, and for the first time in too long he finally feels small. It's a good feeling, a reminder that the things that are happening to him aren't the most important things in the world. "I ended up bringing her back three months later because my newly five year old daughter couldn't even stand without doubling over in pain, and that wasn't right. I might be a little bit dumb when it comes to little kids, but I knew that it wasn't right that she couldn't even stand."

The tears that had been welling up in his eyes finally fall over and run down his cheeks in easy waves. He wipes them away with the back of his arm before he can think not to and keeps his gaze away from Louis. He doesn't want anyone to see him like this, let alone Louis. He doesn't want to be seen as weak because he's crying.

"They did more testing, but only because I insisted. They were going to just turn me away again, but I demanded they run the tests, and when they did, they told me they got it wrong, that the tumor wasn't benign and that they would need to do a full course of chemo to be able to fix her." Louis says something, probably something like he's so sorry or that it's awful, but the blood is rushing so loudly through Harry's ears that he doesn't catch it. "I'm a high school math teacher. I make 3,700 dollars a year in salary and pay 1,500 of that a year in my mortgage. They quoted me over 15,000 for the chemo treatments and said I had to pay at least half up front for them to do it, then the last half once the procedure is done. I can't afford it." The tears come a little faster and a little heavier, then. He hates thinking about his own shortcomings as a father and hates even more the idea that it's his fault his baby is still in pain. He just doesn't know how to fix it.

"I started a fundraiser around my neighborhood. I've always been active around my block, always thrown block parties when possible, I bake Christmas cookies for everyone for the holidays and invite anyone who doesn't have a place to be over to my house. I've done charity events and hosted them all around my neighborhood, done all kinds of things that I thought would make people more than eager to help me out when I really needed it." He clenches his teeth. "I understand the economy is shit right now. I understand that everyone is tight on money, but no one was willing to help. The bank wasn't willing to loan me so much money because my mortgage is still so new. My friends tried to pitch in as much money as they could, but I couldn't even come up with a fourth of it in cash, even after I cashed out my emergency fund. I was going to have to sit back and watch my baby die over money if I didn't do something."

He doesn't say anything else after that, just leans back against the headboard and rests his head against the wall. He hates it. He hates talking about it, hates that it's happening, hates all of this. He hates that he's sitting here with someone he barely knows but feels oddly comfortable telling his story to. This entire situation makes absolutely no sense and he hates that he feels like he doesn't have any control over any of it.

"That's -- God, I don't even know what to say, Harry. I am so, so sorry."

"I know. It's a really bad situation. Thank you, though."

"I would have done the same thing if it were any of my siblings. I know that's not much consolation, probably, but I don't think you're a bad person for doing this. I get it." Oddly, the way Louis says that is comforting. He'd been under ths assumption all this time that Louis thought he was the most vile type of human on this planet, that he was doing all of this for his own selfish purposes. Maybe this is something similar to his own selfish purposes, but he doesn't think it's fair that the world should let a brilliant little heart and soul die over something as silly and as pointless as money. It makes no sense at all.

"Are you still going to use me for your research now that people can relate to me?"

"I think so, but I think you're going to be a special kind of subset."

"How so?"

"I think I'll do types of crime. Type A: the Robin hood. The person who does something bad with the intention to do something else good." It probably shouldn't feel good, to hear that, but it does. He's happy that Louis has some weird semi-approval over this whole thing. "But are you okay? That must have been hard to talk about, and I really appreciate you telling me."

"I'm fine. It's hard to talk about." It makes him think about all the little details when he has to talk about it. Makes him think about how Zayn is risking his entire livelihood as well just for the fact that he wants to help him. He thinks about how he needs to call his mom and Bella and tell them both he loves them more than anything else in the world, but then he can't help but think about how much it hurts to talk to them knowing that he's still so far away.

"What happened to your wife? Or Bella's mom."

"She died pretty shortly after Bella was born. Someone was driving drunk and hit her side of the car." Louis looks at him for a beat too long, but then his hand is reaching over and covering Harry's. It's a gentle gesture and Harry loves it. He's always been a touchy kind of person and he's always found that touch is a sure way to calm him down. This is no different.

"You have such terrible luck, I'm so sorry. You don't deserve any of this."

"I married her mostly out of obligation, in the beginning. We were a little drunk one night and slept together, then she had Bella. We knew each other well enough that it wasn't too hard to convince our parents that we'd been dating when she got pregnant, even though we hadn't been. I'd actually been dating -- someone else. Well. Not dating. Seeing, I guess. Considering dating. Jessica pretended to be my girlfriend on occasion to make sure that him and I could hang out together without any labels."

"Him?"

"Yeah. Jessica was alright with it. But somewhere along the way I ended up falling in love with her, too. We were actually planning on having another kid." He smiles fondly on the memory, remembering how he'd get to come home every day after school to a loving wife and a beautiful daughter. Jessica had been a stay at home mom for the short few months that she got to be with Bella and it had made her so happy that Harry didn't even know how to describe it. "But, tell me about you. I feel like you know so much about me and I don't know a single thing about you."

"Ah, alright. Well, I'm the oldest sibling of seven but I'm not on fantastic terms with my family, so I don't see them as often as I would like to. I've kind of dedicated my entire life to my work. I'm single, my refrigerator in my apartment has never seen a single vegetable, and I have a cactus I call Poke."

"Poke?" Harry asks, a little smile spreading across his face. Louis moves to lay down on the bed, his arms folded right behind his head and resting against the pillows beneath him. He's still looking over at Harry, though.

"Yeah. When I got it I poked my finger on it so hard that it drew blood, so I just kept to calling it that."

"I didn't know it's common practice to name your plants."

"Maybe it's not, but I love poke like my first born." The two of them break out into a fit of laughter at that, the joke likely not as funny as it feels in the moment, but Harry is happy. He feels like he hasn't had a real, authentic smile in so long but Louis has managed to draw one out of him in only a few minutes of speaking.

"So why would you do this then, if you want to dedicate your entire life to your work?"

"If I'm entirely honest, my work has gotten boring over the last few years. Boring in a way that makes me not even really want to go to the office in the  mornings. It's the same research and the same reports that make me want to tear my hair out at best and make me want to run into traffic at worst. This has been some of the most excitement I've ever had in my entire life." Harry doesn't know what to say, doesn't know how he's supposed to respond to that. He stays quiet for a moment, doesn't say anything in response as he tries to turn that information over in his head.

The

"Do you think we could keep this up?" It's a vulnerable question that Harry isn't entirely sure why he's asking, but he thinks it's important to ask. He thinks that asking it will make a decision on his part that he needs to make sooner rather than later.

"What up?"

"Being friendly? Having nice conversations like this?"

"I think so, why?"

"I think if things can be like this, if we can be a little bit more like friends than like we were before, I won't mind you tagging along with me. Coming with me to do things." He never thought he would say that. He never thought he’d say he doesn’t mind Louis being here with him, especially considering he didn’t really want him there in the first place. Yet, with their easy flowing conversations he’s finding that he actually likes the other man being there. 

“I’d like that a lot.” 

  
  


Days pass. 

Things have gotten easier between the two of them, with their conversations no longer stilted. Harry has learned more about the other man in just a few short days with the easy conversation than he had in the entire time they’d been together with the awkward second handed questions. It feels more natural to have things like this, to feel like he can be himself in front of the man who he’s been slightly stuck with. But he doesn’t like to say the word stuck anymore -- because he doesn’t feel like he’s been stuck. Rather, now, it almost feels like something he would have chosen if he would have known it would have been this easy. 

Sometimes he even forgets that Louis is really only here to study him. Or, at least according to the other man, he isn’t  _ only  _ here to study him. It’s just a big part of what made him want to chase him down in the first place. Which, Harry figures is an entirely valid reason. 

Louis has been asleep for the last two hours, head pressed up against the side of the door with his hand smooshed against his cheek. He's cute, is the thing.

Harry's always been at least mildly aware of his own attraction to men. It's something that's always settled in the back of his mind and appeared at the worst of times when it's the very last thing he wants to think about -- but this almost feels different. He's not just physically attracted to the other man. Something lies beneath that, something Harry hasn't felt since he first met his wife. And that -- that's a feeling, a thought, he can't even begin to unwind. Or maybe he just doesn't want to.

He doesn't have the mental space to deal with all of it. There are more pressing matters that he needs to deal with that don't involve something as trivial as that.

Besides, in the end, he's just going to say goodbye to Louis and they're both going to go their own ways and they'll never cross paths again. That's something that hasn't been said out loud, but Harry knows that's what's going to happen. He knows that's what needs to happen, for both of their own sakes. Otherwise things will get messy, complicated in ways he doesn't know how he would explain. He'd told his mom that he was going on a summer-long workshop seminar. As far as he knows, she's still under that impression and he hasn't done anything to convince her otherwise. At least that's what he hopes.

So, bringing a man home and trying to explain that he's at least sort of very attracted to him would be chaotic.

So he does what anyone else in his situation would do.

He just erases that thought from his mind and decides he's not going to think about it.

The two of them only need to be together for a few more days, anyway. He has one more bank that he needs to hit, and then they're done. He'll have enough money for Bella's surgery to be done and for her treatment to be paid for. They can both go their separate ways and get on with the rest of their lives that dont' start and end in the front seats of his car.

Louis stirs, then, a little groan pushing it's way past his lips, and then he's sitting up. He stretches his arms above his head and pops his neck before he looks over.

"Did I miss anything exciting?"

"Just a few hundred more miles of nothing." That's all it's been since they started driving through Wyoming. Absolute nothingness in the worst of ways. It's been boring and it's made his eyes droop more than they have the entire time that he's been driving, but it makes it easier to know that he has someone to talk to, now.

"Oh, darn, wish I would have seen that," Louis says with a tired laugh. He keeps doing a few different stretches before he settles still and just keeps looking out the window. It's a clear day, at least, with only a few specklings of clouds in the sky and the rest a clear blue. It's almost the same shade as Louis' eyes in the right light.

But no. He doesn't need to think about that. Not when the static of discomfort is finally completely gone between them and things are better. They’re more than better, realy, they’re good. He has no business to go about messing it up. There’s no reason for him to try and ruin things when they’ve only just gotten better. The silence between them is comfortable - soft and soothing in a way he’s never really felt.

His mother had always said that comfortable silence is overrated. 

For once, he agrees. It’s something he’s never related to before, yet now it all becomes so clear. 

There’s the underlying energy of something left unsaid, of something that both of them are feeling, and he can’t help but think about it. He’s not sure if Louis is thinking along the same lines as him. He’s not even sure if he’s on the same planet of thought as the other man, but he can’t help but think that he never will know.

  
  


Harry is sitting on the floor of their hotel room with the duffel bag in front of him. A few remaining envelopes are sitting all around him as he counts out the money into different amounts into each envelope. He’s counted it all up and realized they need one more. One last time. He’s about three thousand dollars short and then everything will be done. 

His process is perfect. 

It's been a calculated science that he'd come up with at the beginning of all of this.

Each envelope is meant to look like a different donation from someone who likely doesn't exist. He's been making up names the entire time and just writing random names in the return address box, without an actual return address, just to make it look like it's real people sending the bills rather than just him.

Being a teacher has made him see more than enough kinds of handwriting that it was easy to learn and copy so many that he can write names at the top of each one to disguise his own. He changes hands as he writes the names to disguise it even further. Louis is helping this time, too, changing his handwriting up as he writes different made up names on each envelope then bringing about five at a time over to Harry.

When they have about three dozen envelopes, Harry starts dishing out the cash into each one. A few with one five dollar bill. A few with two tens. A couple with just a dollar. A few with twenties. One with a one hundred. He makes sure none of them have matching serial numbers, has gotten a few of the bills wet and dried them with the hotel room hair drier. He's done as much as he can to try and ward off suspicion, even if it feels a little excessive at this point.

He's not sure what brings it on, though, as he's holding some of the money in his hands, about to put it into the envelopes where it belongs, but he starts thinking about all of this. About how he could have just ruined his entire life -- and what if it was all for nothing? The doctors themselves had said that even with the treatment they can't guarantee anything. Bella's life could never be guaranteed and yet he still went out to do all of this.

Maybe he's just a good dad doing his absolute most to try and save his baby girl's life -- or maybe he's just a stupid optimist. He doesn't know what he'd do if it turns out that all of this was for nothing. Would he kill himself? Would he turn himself in and take the punishment for all of this? Would he just grieve it like a normal parent who's lost a child? He doesn't know how he would handle that and he's never really given himself a chance to even think about it.

Until now, he hasn't thought about even the possibility that Bella might not make it out of this. He could let her go into that operating room, say goodbye as she's wheeled away and have to make terms with that being their last goodbye. He could make her go through all the pain and suffering of treatment only to still lose her, in the end.

He doesn't notice the wetness in his eyes until he watches it fall in big round globs onto the white paper of the envelope in front of him. Even just the idea of losing his girl is too much. He can't think about it. It feels like something that can't happen. If she were to go, how could the world keep going? How could it keep going without someone as soft and good and as caring as her? Why would it want to?

"Harry, what's wrong?" Louis asks, because of course he notices. He's not sure if he would want to be left alone with these kinds of thoughts racing through his mind, but he also doesn't know if it feels good to be called out about crying like this. He'd always been told that grown men aren't supposed to cry, but he doesn't know if he deserves to stick to that idea anymore.

Grown men probably aren't supposed to rob banks, either. But yet, here he is.

"What if this isn't enough? What if it doesn't work?" He's crying with full body sobs, his shoulders shaking in a way he doesn't think he's ever experienced before. It's so much -- he can't breathe, his lungs feel like they're full in a way that keeps him from getting a full breath in. Louis comes over in long and fast strides and plops himself down right in front of him.

"You can't think about that right now, H. You're doing everything you can to make sure she gets better, and everything else is out of your control. You're doing everything you can do and that's all you can do."

It's a rational thought and it's something Harry feels like he knows, of course. But hearing it somehow helps. He could tell himself that a thousand times and it likely wouldn't feel any better than it does when he hears Louis say it. But if he's truly doing everything he can and he still loses her, would all of this be worth it? He doesn't think it would be.

"If she dies, I don't want to keep going knowing I did all of this."

"Listen, I'm not an advocate for robbing banks. I'm really not. But you're doing things right now that other people would never have even thought of. You didn't throw in the towel. You're doing everything that you can possibly do, even beyond what people mean when they usually say that. This is everything you could possibly do other than go to medical school and operate on her yourself." Somehow, that cracks a laugh out of Harry. He feels like it shouldn't, but somehow it does. 

"Do you think it's worth it, then? For the chance?"

"Absolutely. I think that if you would have sat back and just hoped she got better she would have had no chance. At least now you've given her some sort of a chance to have a life." Harry is quiet for a moment, trying to take all of that in. He'd known that if he would have just sat at home that his daughter would have died. He'd known that all along and that's why he'd left in the first place. He takes a breath and wipes the tears away from his eyes with the back of his hand. "Maybe when all of this is over you can try and advocate for some sort of a cancer treatment center. So no one else ever has to feel that kind of helplessness that you're experiencing right now."

"I feel like that would be a good idea." Louis smiles and squeezes Harry's hands while they're still sat together on the floor. "I want you to meet her."

This seems to take Louis aback. His head tilts to the side and his eyebrows furrow just slightly. "You want me to go home with you?"

"I mean --" He pauses, trying to figure out how to say what he wants to say. There are so many ways that he could say it but he knows he needs to be the most clear about it all. "Yes. You've been very kind to me and had you gone to the police after our initial meeting I -- I would probably be in prison right now and she would have died anyway. So, in part I guess I can credit her still having a chance to you. So I want you to be able to meet her. If you want to."

"I'd love to."

It's not the direction that Harry thought the night would take by any means, but he has no complaints. He's happy, and more so because of the wide smile that has spread across Louis face as he helps Harry put some money into the envelopes.

When they're all packed up and with the address to either one of the anonymous P.O. boxes Zayn and Harry had bought together or Zayn's house directly on them, they crawl into bed together in their one-bed room once again.

Harry wakes up to the sun shining in his face and he feels warmer than he has when he's woken up in a long time.

It takes him a moment to realize that he'd managed to wrap his arms around Louis' form sometime during the night. His front is pressed right against Louis' back and with the rate and pattern of the other man's breathing it's fairly clear that he's still awake. A spike of anxiety shoots through Harry's stomach as he looks at what he's done. His face ignites with the heat and embarrassment of it and he draws his arms away.

"I'm -- so sorry. I have no idea how that happened." His voice is nearly shaking with it. It's too early in the morning for him to be feeling this many strong emotions and it's only made worse by the seconds that Louis takes to respond. He moves, sits himself up back against the headboard.

"I don't mind. It was actually nice." There's a stillness in the air between them, then, but it's not tension. Harry doesn't know how to describe it. Almost like it's charged all around them and everything they say only adds to the feeling.

"You liked it?"

"Yeah, I'm a cold sleeper and you're a warm sleeper. It felt good to have that."

"Have you … been awake long?" It's quiet again for at least a few seconds. Louis doesn't seem to have a problem with the short spaces between the answers that make everything feel like it's tense, but Harry can't stand it. Each second in these moments where he feels like he needs to hang on to every single word feel like hours, most times. It's the worst kind of way to feel and he hates prolonging it any longer than necessary.

"Not too long," Louis finally says in response. "Can I ask you something really odd?" That's the phrase that makes it feel like the air could electrocute him fully, bake him alive with how much he hates it. He doesn't know how to navigate it and he realizes all over again that the ball is fully in Louis' court. Louis is good at that, at navigating and controlling conversations so it feels like he's always a few steps ahead. At best, Harry feels like he can keep up with the other man. And then in these moments he feels like he's been left miles behind and doesn't have a clue how to catch up.

"What kind of odd?" Harry follows Louis' lead and sits up, too, lets himself sit back against the headrest of the bed and stretches himself out to try and make it seem like he's not as affected by all of this as he really is. Of course, he knows that Louis is far enough ahead of him that he can tell. But he figures there's no harm in trying.

"Just... odd."

"Alright, ask."

"Can I kiss you?"

Then the air loses it's charge.

Harry stares at the other man, completely dumbfounded. He'd told himself that he needed to stop thinking about these things, that they were silly fantasies, that he would only break his own heart if he so much as  indulged the thought. Yet, now Louis is asking if he can act out everything Harry thought would never happen.

He can't even verbalize his answer, can only keep staring and give a pathetic kind of nod. It feels like a dream that if he said anything it would all fade away. Then, Louis is leaning a bit forward to bring their lips together in a soft touch. It doesn't last long, barely a few seconds, but it's incredible.

He hasn't even brushed his teeth, but he's happy to be this close to the other man. That thought rolls away to the back of his mind before he can pay it any more attention, and he's smiling. He's smiling so much that he thinks his cheeks will start hurting if he keeps it up.

"Where did that come from?" He finally asks. A lot of it is confusing, both in the sense that he doesn't really understand why Louis would want to do that with him specifically and the rest confusing because this doesn't feel like it should be real.

He'd married so young and met her even younger that he hadn't even humored the thought of being with a man. It had always just come in passing snippets of thought, and then when he became a dad it went away completely. When he was alone again he devoted his entire life to Bella and let the thoughts just fade away on their own.

Only now he has nothing to distract himself with. He has nowhere he can run and no way to block out the thoughts. They're right there with nothing to stop them and Louis is only making them more powerful. Harry finds that he doesn't mind, oddly enough. It's almost a pleasant feeling, to finally be able to indulge the years and years of built up ideas that he'd never been one hundred percent certain he would enjoy.

But now he's entirely certain he all he can think of now is he wants more.

"I'm attracted to you. You're beautiful both on the outside and your mind is beautiful, too."

"Even if I'm a criminal?"

"I think I judged you a bit prematurely. I wouldn't classify you as a criminal at all. I think you're just like anyone else, doing what you need to do."

"I don't think you're completely right about that, but I do appreciate the sentiment."

"What part do you think I'm wrong about?"

"I mean -- I'm definitely a criminal. I can go to prison for all of this, if I get caught. Even if it was my last chance to save my girl." It's another one of those thoughts that he tries not to think about unless he absolutely has to -- and this feels like one of those moments where he doesn't have to. He lets the thought go away before he can really let himself dwell on it. "And I did take you hostage at gun point."

"You know, I should probably be more upset about that than I actually am. But I'm not even really mad about it at all. Even when I was chasing you down, it wasn't so much anger as it was just -- I felt like you owed me something. Which, I don't anymore, but that was the main motivation. It's weird, right?"

A grin spreads across Louis' face and it doesn't take long for a matching one to take it's place on Harry's face.

"Maybe a little weird, but I'm glad it worked out this way."

"Me, too."

"Anyway, are you going to kiss me again or was that just a one time thing?"

"Not sure if you want to open that can of worms." Louis is grinning, almost mischievous, and Harry is still smiling. His cheeks do start to hurt after a while. But then Louis is kissing him again and everything for the moment feels like it should be. He's doing everything he can to take care of Bella. He's doing everything he can in the moment. There's nothing else he can do to change things and all that's left to do is go home.

He hopes Louis is a part of it.

 

They’re back on the road, just a few hours after they’d stopped to eat breakfast. 

"We're stopping soon, right?" The question is vague, but Harry knows what it means. He knows Louis is really trying to ask about the next robbery, so he just nods. He hates saying the words out loud, mostly because they make it all feel more real. Talking about it happening isn't he defining factor that makes it real, but there are more times than not that it feels like that's what it is. He can't really explain that, but it's a feeling he's had since he so much as started the planning for all of this.

There had been days of working towards this where Harry and Zayn had sat inches from each other and not said a word just because saying what they were doing made it feel too real. "I want to help, this time."

And that -- that's not what Harry was expecting at all, not in the slightest. He can't help but look over to the other man, a look of slight shock spread across his features.

"You want to help me? As in..." He trails off, hoping Louis will elaborate at least a bit on his own.

"I want to go inside with you. It might throw off the crime scene, anyway. If you suddenly got a partner on the last robbery, they wouldn't really be able to connect it to you... right?"

"That's not the real reason you want to help me. You wouldn't risk your entire life like this just for something like that." Harry doesn't even think before he's saying that. It just makes no sense that Louis would even ask something like that.

"No, you're right," Louis says, sighing. "I don't know. I've been thinking about it since the last one. I don't really have a solid reason and I know it's absolutely mad that I want to help you, I just do." Harry takes a moment to think about that, takes a moment to try and consider it, and only then does he agree.

"Alright, then," He finally says.

"Just walk me through it, I guess?"

So, he does.

Harry doesn't remember the town name that they're driving through, but when he stops, the two of them don't really need to talk to know exactly what's going on. Since Louis had asked to help, Harry has had a little bit easier of a time wrapping his mind around the fact that Louis is here truly just because he wants to be. If he's risking his life for something like this, tehre wouldn't be any room for other reasons. He wouldn't just be helping for his study. If he was still here for reasons other than wanting to be, Louis would likely have just gotten back inside of the trunk and waited everything out again.

He'd switched his license plate out once again in the hotel before they'd left, and he takes a short, deep breath. He looks to Louis one last time as the other man digs their masks and one gun from inside of the glove box. He can't remember what had made him decide it was alright to start putting it in there again, but the trust that just that alone had made him feel in Louis was more than enough to settle any nerves about the entire thing. "This is your last chance to back out."

"I know."

It doesn't really make any sense, at least not in Harry's mind - but a part of him is glad that it's working out this way. So, he pulls his car in front of the bank. Then the two of them are getting out and rushing inside.

It's all a blur, just like usual, but this time it's easier because Louis is there. He'd worried, in the beginning, that he'd be less efficient because he'd worry about Louis, but the other man holds himself so confidently that it's almost harder to worry about him than it would be to just ignore it. Louis controls the people in the bank as Harry goes to get the money. It's the same strategy. The teller keeps her hands above her head and only lowers one to get the money and gives it to him right from the drawer. He watches her as she does, and only when the money is tucked safely away inside of a bag do the two of them sprint from the bank.

Louis drives, this time, and Harry rides the waves of adrenaline and anxiety that course through him in nearly painful waves. He's never liked the feeling that comes after the robberies, just like he's never liked the feeling after a job interview or the feeling after a rough discussion with a parent about their child's behavior.

It's easier, this time, though. Where his body would normally be painfully tense in a way he'd never experienced with any other kind of anxiety, this is more of a dull ache. His muscles are sore and heavy with the adrenaline but otherwise he doesn't feel anything that he usually does after these things. A part of him can't help but dwell on the fact that he knows how he usually feels after a robbery, but it's alright.

He knows this is just a part of who he is.

And now, it's a part of who Louis is, too.

They ditch the changed license plate in a dumpster behind a café three hundred and fifty six miles away. They backtracked, all the way back to nearly the top corner of Montana, if for nothing other than to make sure people saw their faces and knew they were there. It wouldn't make sense, rationally, for them to go back there if the bank robberies were them and a detective was trying to pin it on them. Louis even makes sure to use a check for a paper trail that he was here. It's slightly risky to start a trail that could follow them, but Harry doesn't mind. If Louis thinks it's best, then it's best. Especially now, considering the fact that the two of them have done it. If only Harry was guilty, still, he might not completely trust Louis' intuition. But now - he does. It's something that he doesn't know whether or not would have come naturally with time. It's not something that he'd thought to have anxiety about before this moment, but now he realizes that it's something that would have barred any of their chances of being together long term. It's something that, he thinks, needed to be done for them to be on equal playing fields.

Now, he can see himself living a life with Louis that he otherwise might have been afraid to do. Had Louis not done this, Harry might have bene afraid at different turns that Louis would get upset with him and go and turn him in for all of this. He's never wondered much about the statue of limitations on something this serious and it's not something he's ever thought to look up. Even when he'd been planning all of this, he hadn't thought there would be a partner or a bystander that would know this much. He and Zayn had had this talk and Zayn had agreed to stay completely quiet about some things as long as Harry didn't drag him down with him. He has a family of his own and Harry understood that even in the beginning.

It feels like a horrible thing to think, but he's almost glad that it's done. He still doesn't know Louis intentions behind it and he knows he's going to ask later when they're settled in bed, but for now, he just tries to ride out the unpleasant feelings that settle inside of all of his muscles.

"How far should I go?"

"At least a few hundred miles. Better safe than sorry." Louis turns the music up and Harry leans his head against the side of the door and tries to fall asleep. He's never been very good at sleeping in cars, but it's easy to just zone out with the feeling of the vibrations and the noise of the tires against the pavement.

 

"I think we should talk about what happened." He has a feeling Louis knows what he's talking about, but he figures he doesn't want to talk about it, really. It's uncomfortable for both of them and he knows it, but he still feels like he needs to know. "Like... the real reason." There's a long stretch of silence between them as Louis thinks about it. Harry doesn't mind waiting. If nothing else he's managed to grow fond of the stretches of silence that Louis takes to get his words just right.

"I think the real reason I wanted to do that with you was because I wanted you to know that I'm not in this for anything other than wanting to be here with you." It's completely out of nowhere and Harry looks up from his puzzle book with his eyebrows furrowed.

"What do you mean?" Louis is toying with a piece of loose thread on his jeans, clearly a way to keep his mind occupied through the hard converstation, but Harry doesn't think he's ever seen him look nervous like this. He doesn't think he's seen Louis look nervous at all since he first cornered him in his hotel room. It's an expression that makes a pit of worry well up inside of Harry, just because it doesn't look right on the other man. It looks completely and entirely incorrect for him to be worrying.

"I just - I kind of abandoned the idea of studying you." Harry had already figured that, just because he hadn't seen Louis taking any kinds of notes in his journal in way longer than he thought he should have to keep gathering data. The other man continues, still, though, "You stopped fitting my subject criteria a long time ago and I didn't want to say anything because I kind of started to like being out on the road like this. I know it's weird. I know."

A short pause, but he looks like he still has more that he wants to say, so Harry doesn't say anything just yet.

"It mostly started after we were being friendly to one another and I kind of realized I was significantly more attracted to you than I was in the beginning, and that made things a little bit harder than they should have been. But, then I spent some time trying to work through what I was feeling juts because of the physical attraction and what I was feeling because of the emotional connection. And then I realized that I just really liked being around you, and I had this horrible feeling that you would never fully trust me unless I really committed, and I didn't want that. I don't want that. I -" Harry finally decides to cut him off, then.

"You didn't have to do that to get me to trust you."

"I know. I know there are a lot more ways I could have gotten that, but I've always been a pretty extreme type of person."

"I know. It's a part of my... emotional connection to you, too." Harry grins, throwing in an easy tease towards the other man makes the atmosphere clear up almost immediately. He's happy. He can't explain how good it feels to know that Louis is completely in this, even if it's slightly nerve wracking to know that he would go to such an extent to earn his trust. "But seriously, don't do anything else crazy to get me to trust you, please. I trust you."

"Good to know. I trust you, too."

There's a soft lag in their conversation for a moment, but it's comfortable. Harry sets his puzzle book to the side and lays down and holds his arms out to silently ask Louis to cuddle him. The other man obliges easily, settles down with his head right above Harry's heart. Harry moves to play with a few strands of his hair with his free hand.

“What are you going to do if you get caught?” It's a question that clearly comes from a place that says that Louis cares about him, cares about what would happen if the worst were to happen. But it still takes Harry back. He doesn't like thinking about it, hasn't thought about it since the beginnings of those thoughts started to spiral in his mind. It's something that - it were to happen - he wouldn't know how to deal with. It's one of those things that he'd thought of so extensively before he set out to do all of this and now he doesn't know how we would possibly handle all of it. It feels like a far away possibility, like something that couldn't happen to him. He tries to think of himself as someone just doing something for a good reason. Even if that's not something that would hold up in court, that's a big part of what he has to tell himself to keep himself going on all of this. He's a good person and good people don't deserve bad things so he hopefully shouldn't get caught.

It's absolutely faulty logic, but it's what has kept him going this long. The longer he holds on to it the more real that he can force it to feel, and then before too long, things start to feel okay.

“I cant, my daughter will die without me. My mom isn't fit to take care of her very long, she's old and the system would eat away a sick kid.” More things he doesn't want to think about. Without Bella, he doesn't have much of a purpose to be around. There are little thoughts that make him think that Louis could be his purpose, but he doesn't know what to make of those, still.

“So that just means you need a plan for what you're going to do if it does happen, right?” That's something that takes Harry off guard all over again. Louis always seems to say things that Harry isn't expecting, and it takes a moment for him to take the words in - both at surface level and then again to try and understand exactly what it is that the other man means by that.

"You mean like some kind of cover story?"

"Exactly. Something that the police wouldn't be able to doubt."

"Alright... But the only problem is that I actually am the one who's been doing all of this, and I have no solid alibi... because I was at the banks when the robberies happened." Louis doesn't even hesitate when all of that is thrown at him.

"Right, yeah. However, you weren't at all the other banks. You came to me because you've been struggling with a pretty severe form of obsessive compulsive disorder, which happens to be my specialty in clinical psychology and there have been plenty of papers that have been published stating I'm one of the best people to treat it. It's been aggravated badly by the stress of your daughter being ill, right?" Harry stares at him, blank faced. Louis continues anyway. "So, you came to me and we decided that we're going to travel by car back to Michigan because flying was too expensive for either of us. You told your mother you were going to a work thing over the summer because you're embarrassed about your condition -- we all know the horrible stigma that surrounds the mental health community, right?" He doesn't, but he can believe it. "You've decided to pay me to come and stay with you for a while to treat your disorder, and that's why we've been together."

"Okay, but what about the people who saw you get taken as a literal hostage at that bank?"

"You were there, too, remember? Another innocent bystander with me as I was just trying to deposit the money you'd just given me as a deposit for treating you."

"No one is going to believe that. No one saw me there."

"You'd be amazed at how easily it is to create false memories inside of people. Memory isn't a solid nor concrete thing. It's something that can be changed and molded if you know what you're doing. Especially during a moment of trauma like that. Everyone in that room probably has a different memory of it."

"And let me guess, you do?"

"It was something I studied in my masters program, yeah."

It's a damn good plan. Harry can absolutely admit that it's an incredibly well thought out plan. He doesn't know how well it would work out presented in front of a real cop or a real judge, but it's hopeful. Before, he figured he wouldn't have any idea about an out -- that he'd be trapped and not able to do anything except let the system prosecute him in the way he figures he deserves. Yet -- now he feels like he has a chance. Now it feels like he has a way out, and it's all because of Louis.

He pulls Louis closer to him and kisses him, harder than he has before, the widest smile of the night spreading across his face.

 

Knowing Louis is going to come home with him makes things easier. He isn't completely sure if he's going to stay, but he at least knows that he's coming, and that's enough for now. But, he realizes, he doesn't know very much about the other man. He trusts him and he loves being around him, but he doesn't know little things about him. He knows his favorite food and how he takes his tea. He knows how he sleeps and he knows that he loves affection. The things that Harry knows he needs to know about him are all there, but he doesn't have the larger details. He doesn't even know how old the other man is. So, as they're driving, he decides to ask.

"I feel like I don't know a lot about you, besides the little things. Tell me about you?"

"What do you want to know? Open book and all, just not very good at talking about myself in general."

"I don't know. How old are you?"

"Twenty six."

"What was your schooling like?"

"I did both my undergraduate and my masters at Johns Hopkins, but then I moved back to California to get my PhD. I did my undergraduate on neuroscience and general psychology. Then in my masters program I got a little more interested in psychology rather than neuroscience and stuck with that. Did a lot of memory research and behavioral research. I worked in a clinic and specialized in treating anxiety disorders. Then I did my PhD on deviations of the mind and abnormal psych." Louis pauses, "What was yours like?"

"I didn't get a PhD. Teaching at a university level never really appealed to me so I just stopped at my masters. But I did applied mathematics for both undergraduate and then my masters. I thought for a while that I would go into aerospace engineering, but about half way through my masters I decided I wanted to be a teacher and changed that entirely."

"Was Bella around already?"

"Oh, yeah. I was a single dad doing schooling which was interesting. I did a lot of tutoring and undergraduate teaching to make money. My mom is really the entire reason that I was able to keep Bella around, just because she watched her while I worked. Most of my professors were nice enough to let me bring her to classes when I explained the situation."

"She sounds like a really good kid,"

"She is. I miss her more and more every day, you know?"

"I can imagine."

"Why did you leave California so willingly? Do you want to go back?" This makes Louis pause for a while as he seems to mull over all of the ideas he has to answer.

"I don't want to go back, no. I honestly hated living there and being there in general."

"How come?" He's prying, but he's curious. He doubts Louis would have a problem with shutting him down if he didn't want to answer a question, so he's not worried about that.

"My family is there. I have a lot of little siblings, but they don't really know me because I'm the oldest by a lot of years."

"Your mom had you young?"

"Yeah, really young. My dad and I never really got along, so I left as soon as I could. I went back because I thought that maybe I could connect with them as an adult, but it hasn't really worked."

"And what about work? Aren't they going to miss you? Do you have clients?"

"Ah, no. I do research now, primarily. It's not a great company. They took me on right after I had one big and famous publication, but then they denied funding for nearly every single other proposal that I've given them, so I'm not going to miss that."

"What do you want to do, then?"

"Honestly, Michigan sounds lovely. I think I might just stay there." Harry isn't sure if there's a 'with you' hidden somewhere in that sentence, but he's not too worried about it. For now, he's just happy that they're alright. He's happy that he can get to know the other man and that there aren't any more walls built up between the two of them.

They mostly just listen to music for the rest of the drive, but every once in a while one of them will ask a question to the other and it sparks a conversation. It's fun and comfortable and Harry realizes pretty quickly that he can't imagine himself getting tired of this very easily. It's so easy to talk to Louis that sometimes he looks at the clock as they start talking and then they get lost in it and hours will have passed. There's a kind of chemistry between the two of them that Harry doesn't think he's ever felt.

Even with his wife. He'd been comfortable with her in a way he'd never been before her, but things feel almost stronger than that with Louis. He knows that she would have wanted him to move on, knows that she wouldn't have wanted him to live the rest of his life completely alone, so he decides that that's what's best for him. And if Louis is willing to take that leap right alongside him, then he's more than happy to have him.

"Can we drive through Colorado on the way back?"

"What's there?" Harry asks. He's not being critical, but he hadn't considered driving through it.

"The mountains, pretty things, I don't know. I've always wanted to go."

"Alright, but you get to do that great drive through Wyoming. There's no way I'm going to do that for a second time." Louis laughs at that, but he agrees.

  
  


Harry’s hair is whipping around in the wind as the car speeds down the road. Louis is driving, now, and there’s music blasting loudly between the two of them. They’re singing along loudly - and badly, most of the time - but they’re having fun. Harry’s cheeks hurt from smiling as much as he has throughout the day, and he’s so, so happy. He hasn’t been this happy since his wife died, and that’s a thought that he thinks he’s finally ready to face. 

He thinks he’s falling in love with Louis, and he’s not even afraid of it, anymore. He’s happy, even. Louis has made it clear that they can do things on his own terms with his own boundaries since he doesn’t know where he’s even supposed to start with all of this, but he wants to take everything that Louis is willing to give. 

He hasn’t decided how, or even  _ if,  _ he’s going to tell the other man just yet, but he thinks he will in time. It feels a bit too much like things have gone too fast in a way that he can’t even wrap his mind around what’s happening to him, but he’s still having the time of his life. 

They have two and a half weeks before Harry has to be back home and it feels like just the right amount of time for him to figure out what he’s doing and what he’s going to do with all of this. 

“Where should we pull off for tonight?” Louis asks, turning to look at Harry. 

“Anywhere, I don’t mind. Think I might want somewhere with a pool tonight if they have that, though. My muscles are tense.” 

“Alright, I’ll pull off at the next exit and we can look for a sign that says pool.” Harry smiles again and turns to look out the window. He can’t remember what state they’re driving through anymore with how much everything just seems to blend together, but he’s still happy they’re doing it together. He’s happy that he got stuck with someone as interesting and cool as Louis, just because he’s happy that he grew to like the other man. 

The second hotel they see in the next town has a pool and they split the cost of the room once again as they walk up to the counter. The woman behind the desk doesn’t ask any question like some people have, but Harry’s fairly sure that their cover story is good enough for when people do ask. Business partners, just needing a place to crash for the night before the meeting tomorrow evening. The location of the meeting would change to somewhere within a few hours driving distance if they were asked about it, but either way, he thinks it’s a good starting point. 

 

They’re standing in the lobby, Louis giving the worker the keys back to the room they’d slept in. The air is cold against his skin and he wants to dig his jacket out of his bag and put it on, but he knows they’ll be in the car soon enough, so he doesn’t bother. 

“Harry Styles?” A deep voice asks from behind him. When Harry turns around, there are two officers standing side by side. He sends a glance in Louis’ direction, but he keeps it emotionless. Keeps himself from showing the fear he has inside of him, that he's harbored out of fear of this moment. Louis notices, too, and he signs the paperwork as quickly as he can before he’s walking over to the group of them, the expression on his face just as confused as the one on Harry’s features. 

“Yes, that's me, how can I help you?” 

“You're under arrest for the armed robbery of six banks throughout the past two months.” He let's his eyes go wide, forces a look of shock and confusion to twist over his features. 

“What? How -- that's impossible,” he replies, shock clear in his voice. 

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law…” the officer trails on, but the words don't process in Harry's brain. He looks to Louis one last time before the handcuffs are on his wrists and he's being led to a car in front of the motel. He thinks he hears Louis saying something to the officers, but he can’t hear it over the rush of blood in his own ears. 

 

LOUIS 

 

It takes a moment for Louis to realize exactly what’s going on. 

 

He watches as the men walk up to Harry and sees the fear on the other man's face. His mind shuts down as he watches and all he can do for what feels like an eternity. The seconds tick on as he tries to figure out what's going on -- as he tries to figure out what he could possibly do to help.

Then he remembers their plan. The way they'd figured out they could get Harry out of this if this exact thing happened, and as much as neither of them thought at the time that this would ever happen, he knows now that he has to do something. So he walks up to one of the officers, keeps his composure strong and stern and tries to think of exactly what he's supposed to say.

"Excuse me, what's going on here? Where are you taking him?" Harry is being hauled out of the building in handcuffs as another officer reads him his rights. It's a scene that feels wrong, that feels like it shouldn't be happening, even if he prepared for it. As much as he knew it could happen, or even as much as he knew it probably would happen, he doesn't want to deal with it. The optimistic part of him had only been able to hope that it would never have happened.

"This man is a suspect in a string of armed robberies across the country, sir. Please step back." He knows, logically, that he should just listen. That he should step back and keep himself from getting in trouble. He knows that if he gets himself into trouble, too, that there won't be any chance of getting Harry out of this. So he takes a step back.

But that doesn't stop him from speaking.

"This is absurd. Mr. Styles has been under my medical supervision for the last month. There is no way that he could have robbed a string of banks -- or honestly, a single bank, considering he's been under my constant supervision for the last month." The words come easily. It feels like they come almost too easily, but he can't find it in himself to mind. It feels natural, like what he's saying is normal and acceptable.

If someone had told him six months ago that he'd be lying to the police to get a felon out of their custody because he thinks it's justified to do what he's doing -- he'd have thought they were mad. Yet, now, he doesn't see any other option. Harry going to prison isn't an option.

He hasn't even met his daughter yet, but he already feels this sense of protectiveness over her. He's always believed that no child ever deserves any kind of misery or pain, but knowing that there's a child out there that hasn't even been given the chance to get out of it just because of an inability to pay for it - it makes him angry. It makes him mad in a way he doesn't think he's ever experienced. At least not like this.

"And what gives you the credentials to have had him under medical supervison?"

"I'm Dr. Louis Tomlinson." It takes a moment before the recognition floods over the mans face, but he doesn't stop them from shoving Harry into the back of a cop car. He can see what they're doing through the windows of the lobby of the hotel, and it makes his stomach drop. Anxiety isn't something he's used to feeling so strongly, at least not after he'd learned to manage it properly, yet it still surfaces on occasion. Now doesn't seem like the best time for it to come up, but it swells strongly and he feels sick with it.

"Alright, then. You can come down to the station for questioning, too."

That isn't exactly how his plan was meant to go, but he figures it's better than nothing happening at all. If they're at least willing to hear him out as someone who could potentially prove Harry's innocence, then he can only take that as a possible win.

 

He rides in the front seat of a cop car thirty minutes down to the state police station. Waves of guilt flood through his stomach as he thinks about Harry sitting in the back of a car with his wrists probably hurting from the handcuffs while he sits comfortably in the front - but he doesn't think of that. He doesn't have any room in his mind to think about anything like that, at least not if he's going to be able to do this with a clear head.

They stop off before long in front of a brick building with summer green grass all around it. It almost feels too cheerful to be a police station, but he doesn't think much about it. He watches as Harry gets led inside and follows another officer a few feet behind.

They're taken to two different rooms to be interviewed. At least that's what he assumes. As long as Harry's story matches his own, which he believes it will just with the amount of times they've gone over their plan and how they are going to get it to work, then they should be able to walk free. As long as the two of them are able to convince these people that there's nothing else that can make them seem guilty, then they should be free.

And then the robberies will stop and it will be like nothing ever happened at all.

The room is mostly grey, with chrome-like metal lining the sides of the walls where there isn't a large one-way mirror on the other side. He can see his own reflection in the mirror-side, and he thinks he looks put together. He thinks he looks like someone these people can trust.

He can't help but wonder how long they're going to make him sit here, though.

Are they going to take Harry's side of the story first? Are they going to take both at the same time and monitor closely for any differences between the two of them? Are they going to try and pretend one person said something that they didn't?

Even with all of the research he's done on things like this, he can't help but feel anxious with all of it. The worst part is, he knows that's the point, he knows that's the goal. He knows that's what they're trying to do, to make them slip up and ruin their stories so that they aren't consistent. If there's one thing worse than a bad cop, it's a lazy cop. The type that wants to just nail the first suspect they've brought in because they refuse to look even further.

And even if that's not the case of this one -- considering Harry actually is the suspect they're looking for -- he can try his best to at least make it look like that's what is going on. Maybe that's a cruel thing to do and maybe he should feel bad about it, but he doesn't think he'd be able to live with himself fif he didn't even try to stop Harry from getting put behind bars.

He's not a bad guy. He's a good person who's just doing something that isn't right for a good reason, and he understands. As much as he probably shouldn't, he really does. Harry doesn't deserve to go to prison and his daughter doesn't deserve to die.

He's led into a small room once they get to the station. He knows he's not the one on trial here, and that's made even more obvious by the fact that they leave the door propped open and the woman that had been sitting at the front desk comes in and asks him if he wants anything to drink.

He asks her for water and she just smiles kindly before she goes off to fetch it.

He doesn't remember the name of the town they're in now, as much as he thinks he should, but it has the same kind of aura around it that most small towns all share. The people are kind and polite yet it feels stagnant and forced in a way that can't be matched. It feels almost like they're being polite to appease others around them rather than the people just involved in the interaction.

"Thank you," he says with a smile when the woman brings back a small clear cup full of water.

It feels wrong to feel welcomed. He can't help but let his thoughts wonder back to Harry. Harry who's likely sitting in one of the other rooms on this hall nervous and alone. As much as Louis knows that he's done wrong, he doesn't think that he deserves to be caught. Perhaps one day he'll face some kind of punishment for what he's done, but for now, he doesn't deserve it. His family doesn't deserve it.

Not yet.

It's only a moment longer that he's sat there by himself, water almost all the way gone, before a different officer walks into the room. His uniform looks pressed, like he just got it out of the dry cleaners a few hours earlier, and he smells like starch as well.

"So I understand that you're Mr.Styles' doctor?"

"Yes, sir."

"What exactly for?"

"Now, I'm not really sure it's necessary to share someone else's medical records --"

"He's considered a suspect for the armed robbery of multiple banks, sir. I need you to comply and give me all the information you have." That stunts Louis' heart just slightly. The realization of exactly how serious all of this is almost takes him off guard, even if he'd known all along that this was serious. He just hadn't thought it was that bad.

"I'm treating him for an anxiety disorder. I'm an anxiety specialist so he travelled across the country to seek me out specifically." This clearly catches the man off guard, but Louis doesn't pay it any mind. He and Harry had rehearsed this enough that all he can do is hope that Harry is saying the same thing. "This whole situation definitely isn't helping his issues. So if you would be so kind to ask us all the questions you need to prove us innocent so we can get out of here and get back to treating the issues he needs resolved that would be great." 

"Witnesses say that you were taken at gunpoint at one of the first robberies in a bank in California. Is this true?" The man changes direction and Louis only assumes it’s meant to be a way to throw him off guard. He doesn’t let it work. 

"Me? Taken at gunpoint?" Louis says, quirking an eyebrow with a look on his face. "No. I was in the bank when this was happening and Harry was too. We were both on the ground the entire time it was happening."

"And yet witnesses describe the man who did this to match Mr. Styles perfectly and you to be the hostage the robber took." It's clear the cop isn't believing a word he's saying, but Louis finds that he doesn't mind. He's enjoying the challenge. Enjoying that he has to try his hardest to twist the situation to match what he wants it to match. Having done this for years with his studies on memory, he can't help but be excited about finally getting to apply it in a real world setting.

“Memory is a finicky thing. I highly doubt I’d be so willing to defend a man who had taken me at gunpoint. Mr.Styles is my patient and nothing more. There’s absolutely no reason for all of this.” 

Louis hates that he's almost excited to be lying.

Well, it's not the lying in and of itself that excites him, but rather the idea that he can apply his setting in a scenario where he has no control for no other purpose than to see if it works. He has so much at risk that if it doesn't work then his life is over, yet it's still exciting. There's a kind of energy flowing through him at the idea of getting away with this solely for the purpose of getting it to apply to his research.

"And what about the rather large and sudden donations to a charity in Mr.Style's name?"

"Harry has always been very active and commited to helping his community. His anxiety has only been made worse by his daughter's condition - stomach cancer - getting worse day by day, to the point where he's barely been able to complete his daily duties. His community that he's always helped and been active in is only giving back. Is there something wrong with that?"

Louis hopes that's enough. He's starting to get tired of all of this, and he's not really sure what else there is to say, what else there is to ask.

"So, you were not the one taken hostage at the bank, then?"

"No, sir."

"And Mr.Styles was not the instigator of the incident?"

"No, sir," he repeats again. He thinks this is it. Thinks this might be the moment that gets him let off the hook. The two of them sit there in silence a while as the man reviews his notes, and then he's standing up.

"Alright. I'm just going to go clarify a few things with another officer," He says, and then he's gone. Louis knows that means he's going to review his answers with Harry's - and that's the only part of it that causes him slight stress. He trusts Harry. Trusts him well enough that the other man wouldn't turn on him and turn himself in, and therefore Louis, to lessen his sentence. He trusts that his daughter is important enough to him that he wouldn't risk deviating from their plan.

Louis knows he could just twist his own story, in the end, if he had to, anyway. Play some kind of victim. Say Harry threatened him. It would be a weak twist and it surely wouldn't hold up very well, but he's learned that he can be convincing enough when he needs to be just from this.

So he waits.

He makes sure not to let the stress show on his face and more so even tries to make it look like he's just tired of sitting there. Which, isn't far from the truth.

He's more just tired of sitting there without Harry. He's grown fond of the other man and being without him is making him more stressed than he would normally care to admit.

It's just shy of an hour before two officers return into the tiny room he's been kept in.

"Alright. You and Mr.Styles are free to go. We're sorry for the inconvenience we've caused you both this evening." Louis nods and stands up, makes his way out of the room and into the lobby.

Harry is standing there, hands shoved in his pockets and he looks tired.

He still gives Louis a smile when he sees him. "Hey, Doc," He says, their act still being kept up.

"Hi, Harry. How are you feeling?" It's an act, a ploy for the cops around them, but he knows it's what they need to do to hold up their story.

"Alright. A little nervous. Ready to get home."

"Yeah. Let's talk about that in the car." He pauses, "You gentlemen have a good evening," He throws in with a wave to the officers around them. His heart is pounding inside of his chest, but walking out still feels like the easiest thing he's ever done, in a way.

 

Stepping out of the police station feels like taking a breath for the first time. Harry is shaking, just barely, but enough that Louis notices. It's clear how terrified he had been of all of this all along, and then it happened, and Louis can only imagine how much worse that must have made it. A part of him can't believe that it worked, that they were able to leave without so much as being suspects any longer, but the other part of him only takes it as a pat on his own back to his research.

Back to the thoughts of how easy it is to just claim that memories are wrong. Back to the ideas that people can remember what they want to remember in a time of stress. Even if these people's memories likely were the most correct, he can play it out to seem like they aren't. Maybe that makes him a part of the problem, but right now, it seems like the problem isn't what it should be. Right now, all he wants is to get Harry home safely and to make sure that everything turns out the way it should. 

They get into the car, then, and things are tense. Louis isn't sure how he's supposed to feel at that point. He doesn't really feel anything. At first, he'd thought he would have felt proud. Or at least some kind of sick satisfaction. But instead he just doesn't feel anything at all.

He drives off, gets back onto the highway and tries to just pretend that nothing just happened. That they won't have that to think about for the rest of their lives. Before, he'd thought that Harry would deserve to be caught at some point in his life, but now, seeing the way the man is curled up so small in the seat beside him, staring blankly out of the window, he regrets ever even thinking it. He doesn't know how this is the same man that held up a gun in a room full of people, but he also doesn't know how this is the same man that felt so defeated that he felt this was his only option. There are so many sides to Harry and he's barely seen a few of them, but he can't wait to see them all. Each part of Harry that he feels himself revealing as he gets closer and closer to the other man, the more he feels drawn to him.

The more he feels like he could get used to this, like he could be with Harry for the rest of time and still not see every part of him. It feels like every moment he's meeting someone new, like he's getting to see a new and more interesting part of the other man than he last saw. It's been exciting and it's already something that he knows he's going to struggle incredibly with letting go, when the time comes.

The last thing that he's expecting is for Harry to start crying.

It takes him a moment, takes him long enough for Louis to drive them out of the city and back on to the highway. It's only when they have an illusion of safety and being away from all of that does he finally let go and start crying. Louis understands.

All he can offer the other man is a hand and Harry takes it without hesitation.

The touch feels natural, Louis realizes. The way Harry holds his hand feels practice even if this is the first time it's happened.

The sun is setting over the hills on the horizon. It's bathing the sun in a kind of deep orange glow that feels more like it belongs in a movie than anything else. It doesn't feel like it should be real life and it definitely doesn't feel like it should be his own life. Yet, it feels more correct than anything else ever has.

He pulls over when the wetness in Harry's eyes has let up. "What are you doing?" Harry asks.

"Pulling over so we can watch the sunset."

Harry doesn't respond to that, but he smiles. It's something that seems a little too much, a little like something that he would have heard his friends in university doing for a girl they had a crush on, but he doesn't even think twice about it. It's not for something to impress Harry. It's not for any kind of purpose except to make him happy, and he finds that when Harry is happy, he's happy, too.

They get outside and climb to sit on top of the trunk of the car, gazes fixed on the sky. He wraps his arm tightly around the other man and smiles.

So, he realizes, he loves Harry.

For someone who works in a field where he's meant to study emotions, he's always tried not to hide or mask his own. He knows the dangers of it and he knows that it'll only lead to worse things in the end, but he still knows that there are better times to say something as big as that. He knows that this is likely the worst time and place that he could think of to even want to lay that kind of thing on the other man, so he doesn't.

Instead, he just wraps his arm tighter around the other man. He knows that his actions can't convery what he's saying, but he also knows that actions have always spoken louder than words. If nothing else, he just hopes that Harry can understand that he cares, that he wants the best for him and nothing short of it.

  
  
  


The days go by. They seem seamless in their transitions and every day brings new adventures and more happiness. It’s driving, mostly. A lot of time spent behind the wheel or in the passenger side of the car, but he doesn’t mind it. Not even in the slightest. 

Louis' feet are propped up on the dash with Harry's hand heavy and warm against his thigh. The windows are down and the wind blowing against his face makes him feel alive. The sky is bathed in oranges and reds and pinks as he tilts his head back and looks at the seemingly never ending expanse of the sky. It's everywhere, all around the two of them. It makes him feel so small yet so infinite at the same time, a paradox of existence that he can only fathom when he's looking at the sky.

They're driving through Colorado, now.

The entire state has been stunning, with tall mountains in just about every place he looks as they drive down the highway and long expanses of tree covered wilderness.

Red rocks line the highway, standing tall and unforgiving in their existence everywhere he looks. Trees rest in nooks between the rocks, their roots established deep in weathered cracks. His lungs ache a bit with each breath as he gets used to the thinness of the air brought by the altitude, but the sting reminds him all of this is real. It looks like a picture, like a classic painting. He's not supposed to be here and he's certainly not supposed to feel like all of his existence has been playing up to this very moment.

"Pull over here," He says, pointing to a little dirt patch on the side of the road that looks like people have used to turn around in the past. Harry turns to him and gives him one of his looks, the easy way of silent communication that's flowed easily between the two of them in their time being together. The car comes to a stop and the engine turns off, sending the entire world around them into silence.

The wind is loud and cool against his skin, but he opens the car door and nearly jumps out. "Come on, come with me."

"Where are we going?"

"I don't know. Just follow."

Harry mutters out some kind of agreement as Louis holds his hand tightly. There's a staircase carved into the rocks a few hundred feet up the road, and, nearly dragging Harry behind him, he makes his way up.

"Louis, Christ, what's even up there?"

"I don't know. But I bet it's pretty," He can hear Harry huffing, but he's not focused on that. Instead, all he can think about is getting to the top. It's felt like so long since he's had a goal, since he's had something to work for, and even if there won't be anything different in his life when he gets to the top and finds whatever is up there, he feels like he has to. Like something as small as setting himself a goal of climbing some stairs will make him feel like he has some kind of purpose.

So he climbs on, even when the burn in his legs is just as bad as the burn in his lungs, he keeps climbing.

It takes the two of them about ten minutes to get there, with the slow pace and a few breaks to stop and try and catch their breath, but when he gets to the top he has to make sure all of it is actually real. He's never seen anything even similar to this. Never seen anything that could even compare to the scene that looks painted in front of him.

The view at the top is stunning.

He hadn't known there was an amphitheater here, but nestled between two more towering red columns of rocks are rows of seats, all surrounding a stage also carved into the rocks. The sky is brilliant in it's oranges and reds between the jutting out rocks, and the clouds move fast in the wind.

"Oh, my god," Harry says, mouth ajar. Louis feels he same, breathless and in awe, both from the stairs and the view. There's no one else around so Louis doesn't feel anything except joy as he tucks himself beneath the other man's arm, smiling as he holds him.

"I love you," Harry says and Louis loses his breath again. "I love you, and your absolutely insane ideas, and everything about you, and I'm so glad I met you."

Louis doesn't respond. Instead he just kisses Harry, kisses him in a way he can't even describe with how much it makes his heart flutter in his chest, makes him ache with how much he feels. This had never been his end game. Nothing about this had been planned, yet everything about it leaves him lightheaded and giddy in a way that makes him unable to think of it having turned out any other way.

"I love you," He says in response once he's broken away. "I love you," He repeats, louder. His voice echoes down the stairs, like he's said it a thousand times, and he hopes that every single person in the universe can hear him.

The sun sets rapidly after that, the colors in the sky fading to a deep purple all around them in barely a moment. The seconds stretch on, though, and the feeling from earlier - feeling infinite yet so small at the same time comes back at full intensity. He's announced their love to the world, let it echo against the rocks all around them and float off into the sky. His love, maybe, is infinite. Even if the two of them are small, barely a side thought in the master plan of the universe, he knows that their love is something that will be carried on with or without them.

He doesn't want to lose the moment, even as the sun retreats entirely and the sky is painted black. The stars replace the painted colors in the sky, bright and undisturbed without the city lights threatening them. It’s only them out here, only the two of them with nothing to threaten them, now. 

Alone and without a thought of anything else, it’s easy for Louis to perch himself on his tiptoes and press his lips against Harry’s. 

His mind doesn’t wander away from that moment, doesn’t leave the thoughts of them, together, finally alone. 

He’s not paying much attention to where they’re going, but he thinks Harry is. The other man always seems to be able to handle more than one thing at a time, always seems to multitask and handle whatever Louis can’t, and he gets them to the bottom of the stairs without a hitch. Their lips part only for brief moments to inhale, and those feel too long each time. 

He wants everything with Harry, wants to be closer to him than he has been with anyone. He embraces the feeling, now, rather than runs from it. 

He feels his back pressed up against the cool metal of the car before long, the chill of the mountain air cold against his skin, but he’s warm with how much he wants Harry. His heart is warm, his body is warm, everything about this makes him feel hot with all of it. 

“Back seat,” He whispers between breaths. 

“What?” Harry asks at first, a look of amused confusion crossing over his face before it seems to dawn on him. 

Louis isn’t entirely sure what he’s doing and he isn’t entirely sure how he’s going to manage it. He’s never done this. He’s never been with another man like this yet he wants - he wants it more than anything he’s ever thought he could. 

He wants everything Harry has and everything he can offer him. More, if he wants to admit to the level of selfishness that he has. 

They fumble between each other for another awkward moment, hands unsure and laughs shared easily. It’s easy with Harry. He wants to say it always has been, even if he knows that’s not true, but he’s just happy they’ve gotten where they are now. Perhaps the long road to get where he belongs has been worth it. 

Harry fumbles his way out of his pants as he crawls into the backseat - always a bit of an exhibitionist - but Louis finds it easy to follow suit. Neither of them take off their shirts, but Louis unbuttons his as he crawls into the backseat beside Harry. 

Harry’s fished out a bottle of lotion from his bag within the few moments that it took Louis to get in with him, and he’s coating his fingers with it. A part of Louis wants to do it himself, wants to let Harry fall apart on his fingers, but he knows he’s not skilled enough in that just yet. 

So he watches. 

Watches as Harry looks right at him as he teases his fingers around his entrance and presses in. Time seems to move both faster and slower all simultaneously. Louis wraps a hand around his cock then and strokes himself slowly, unable to keep his hands away with the sight in front of him. 

Harry’s three fingers deep before long, and then he’s pulling them out and sitting up. 

Harry crawls on his lap, his hand wrapping around Louis’ cock that sits hard and heavy between them. It’s tight, cramped and hot, but Louis wouldn’t have it any other way. All he can do is stare up at the other man in awe, his heart pounding out of his chest. 

“Oh, fuck,” Louis moans out, throwing his head back against the headrest behind him, his eyes squeezing shut. Harry’s so tight and warm and the way his hands brace against Louis’ shoulders - it’s too much. Too much and not enough yet just perfect all the same. 

Harry knocks his head against the roof of the car and everything stills for just a moment, and then they’re both laughing. 

It’s not as funny as they make it out to be, but they stop a moment and all Louis can do is reach up and touch Harry’s face. It should be awkward, but it’s everything but. “You’re gorgeous,” He says, the words coming out before he can really think about them. “I love you.” 

“I love you too,” Harry responds before he places a little kiss on Louis’ lips, and then he’s lifting himself up again and Louis is thrown back into the feelings of overwhelm. 

Louis’ hand snakes back between them and wraps around Harry’s cock and jerks his fist around it in sync to the movements of the other man’s hips. It draws another loud moan from his mouth, lips parted in a drawn out moan. 

Neither of them last long, and Louis didn’t expect them to. 

Harry comes first, and Louis follows right behind. 

They stay there again for a moment before Harry pulls himself off and they both move to lay down across the seats. The car is too small, with both of their legs bent at the edges of the seats, but it’s comfortable, and all Louis can do is wrap his arms around the other man. “I love you,” He whispers again. He wants to never stop saying it. 

“I love you.” 

He feels like he’s home. 

 

"You ready?" Harry asks after a while. Their hands are still intertwined, palms a little sweaty from being pressed together for so long, but Louis doesn't mind. His body aches in muscles he hasn’t used in too long, but the ache is comforting. 

"Yeah. Let's go."

  
  
  


**Epilogue**

  
  


LOUIS

The fire is crackling as Louis sits on the floor of the cabin, watching the oranges of the flame lick up and down the bricks all around it. It's warm against his face and body, and it makes his eyes heavy with the tiredness. 

The morning sun hasn’t even touched the sky, but he’s been awake for hours. The looming knowledge that this is it, that _ this _ is the day that he and Harry are going to go home and make their life finally happen. It’s all so, so much. A part of him isn’t even entirely sure he can handle it all. He’s going to be able to start building his family starting tomorrow, and all of that is more than a little overwhelming. 

Yet, it’s overwhelming in the best way he can possibly imagine. 

His thoughts twist to the worry that Harry’s daughter won’t like him, that things will go wrong, but all he can do is acknowledge those thoughts and let them be. Worrying will do nothing for him in this moment, so he tries to stop himself from letting those thoughts take over his mind. 

He takes a drink of the coffee that Harry had made and leans forward towards the flames, looking down at the crackling embers that glow red with their heat. 

"Hey, Harry?"

"Yeah babe?"

"Will you bring me my bag?" He hears footsteps come from the kitchen before the man comes over, bag in hand a few moments later. Louis takes it and puts the ground beside him, motioning for the man to sit beside him. He reaches inside and pulls out the journal that he'd spent the first few weeks of their knowing each other writing down notes about everything Harry did, said, was. 

_ Was.  _

Everything that Louis had thought Harry is was completely wrong. What he _ is _ is amazing, soft, caring and selfless in a way Louis has never before encountered. A part of him still can’t believe that he’d been swept away - literally - by the man of his dreams. 

He holds the journal in his hands for a moment, fingers touching against the leather material, etched in and worn out over it’s life, and his heart feels heavy. The journal itself only weighs less than half a pound, yet it feels like it’s leaving a ton on his shoulders. 

He tosses the journal into the fire and hears Harry's gasp in response. It’s a big thing. It’s something he never thought he would see himself doing, never thought he would be able to do. Everything he’s learned and written down that he thought would be important to publish has been sitting in that journal since the beginning, and he knows he won’t be able to remember all of it if he were to ever decide to publish anything. 

Maybe it’s a stupid decision. Maybe he’ll regret it later, but for now, he feels good about it. Feels like it’s something he’s needed to do for so long that now that he’s actually done it it feels like a weight off of his shoulders. 

“Louis…” Harry says, and Louis feels lighter. 

“It needed to be done. I needed to do that. I’m not going to publish anything about you, now. Not when we have a home and a life to build together.” 

“What if you change your mind?”

“Then I’ll go home and forget any of this ever happened.” Harry comes over to him and sits beside him, before putting his big hands on Louis’ hips and pulling him into his lap. 

“I love you.”

“I love you.” 

“Are you ready to go home?” 

“Always ready.”

  
  


END

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That ending might feel a little rushed, sorry!

**Author's Note:**

> [Support your local fic author (they need caffeine) ](https://ko-fi.com/A237HRB)


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